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George and his Father. 

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BEN AND BENTIE SERIES. 


Three Successful Lives. 


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TWO ILLUSTRATIONS. 



NEW YORK: 

PHILLIPS & HUNT. 

CINCINNATI : 

WALDEN & STOWE. 

1882. 


F'Z-T 


Copyright 1882, by 

PHILLIPS & HUNT, 


New York, 


CONTENTS 


PAQB 

I. George and his Father 7 

II. Ben’s Graduation 31 

III. Ben as a Manufacturer 52 

IV. Charley Grows Ambitious 73 

V. Bentie Solves some Life Problems 87 • 

VI. Bentie’s Graduation 11 1 

VII. A Star in the East 133 

VIII. The Laboratory 159 


Jllust rat ions. 


George and his Father 2 

Charley on the Hill-top 80 




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THREE SUCCESSFUL LIVES. 


I. 


GEORGE AND HIS FATHER. 



''HEN George came home from his 
mother’s funeral, despair was in his 
heart. He returned alone. His fa- 
ther, too feeble in body and too wandering in 
mind to accompany him, had been left as the 
only occupant of the silent floor. 

The Winthrops, Bentie included, who had 
left college to pay this last attention to 
George’s mother, the Stantons, and all of the 
little ones, who shed heart-felt tears as their 
motherly friend was put into her narrow but 
restful bed, had returned to their homes di- 
rectly from the cemetery. 


George’s grief assumed that silent, forbid- 
ding form which, though not congealing sym- 
pathy, wards off its expression. His friends. 


8 


Three Successful Lives. 


though pitying him, deemed it unadvisable 
for the present to offer further consolation. 

Something, of course, must be done. He 
was now in debt to Mr. Winthrop for nearly a 
year in college. He was penniless. He had 
an imbecile father, whose only other outlook, 
should he fail to support him, was the poor- 
house. 

George had an immense amount of pride. 
The disgrace attached to his father’s career 
rankled in his heart. The concomitants of 
that father’s extreme mental and moral degra- 
dation were loathsome to him in the extreme. 
But he had, at the same time, that feeling in 
regard to family that led him to consider him- 
self responsible for either the honor or the 
shame of any one connected with him. 

So, though, as he told Mrs. Rutherford, he 
hated his father, it did not occur to him for 
a minute, after his first passionate resent- 
ment, to rid himself of what he felt to be a 
discouraging and repulsive incumbrance. 

He took the arm-chair opposite the imbe- 
cile, who sat in a corresponding one beside 
the grate, and, placing his feet upon the fen- 
der, looked gloomily into the coals, which 
quivered just as brightly with their ardent 


George and His Father. 


9 


heat as did those from which Bentie had so 
often read pleasant auguries of life.* 

Although he had been known to his father 
but two days, he had already acquired an in- 
fluence over him that promised well to the 
physician who had been in attendance. Tak- 
ing George’s hand that morning, the doctor 
had said earnestly, “You have your father’s 
destiny in your hands, my boy.” 

These words seemed to stand out on the 
red coals in great, burning letters. He read 
them over and over till his eyes ached ; then 
glancing furtively at the gigantic man oppo- 
site, he beheld him wrapped in a dull, leaden 
slumber. 

“ He is nothing more than an animal,” 
muttered George, rising, shaking himself, and 
going to the window. 

All was bright though cold outside. The 
spring breeze did not whisper, as it had done a 
week before, of college honors and a brilliant, 
manly career. It sang no song of a mother in 
waiting for a successful son ; it chanted, in 
low, despairing tones, of a new-made grave, 
the wreck of a soul, the ruin of hopes. 

George could not stand it. He brushed the 

* See Frontispiece, 


lO 


Three Successful Lives. 


angry tears away and turned his eyes again to 
his father, who sat there like a great, silent 
mockery of his son's hopes. H e had wakened, 
and, as George approached him, looked up 
with much love and entreaty in his eyes. 
Somehow this tall, straight, proud youth, his 
son, made him feel that there was something 
of value in his life. He clung to the boy as a 
drowning man does to a plank. He felt that 
George alone could save him. 

“ Come and sit down beside me, my son ” — 
the two latter words spoken with infinite 
pride. 

George recoiled. But, “You have your fa- 
ther’s destiny in your hands,” seeming again 
to flash from the coals, he obeyed. 

The trembling hand crept over his brown 
locks, the hollow and fierce eyes grew subdued, 
the taciturnity dissolved into garrulity, and for 
an hour or two the father talked in a wan- 
dering way of scenes prior to George’s recol- 
lection, of his own boyhood, indeed. 

It was with desperate self-control that 
George sat still under the touch of a hand 
that had blighted the only perfect blossom 
of his life. But he did endure it, and his 
active mind, half intent on what was said. 


George and His Father. 


II 


and half busied with plans for the support of 
each, at length decided to ask Mr. Winthrop 
to intrust him with the school his mother 
had so successfully managed. “ It might 
be ” — George laughed inwardly at the thought 
which he nevertheless cherished — “ that his 
father would so far recover as to be of some 
assistance, and thus afford him time for both 
study and outside effort.” 

So when Mr. Holmes, having at length 
grown tired, subsided into silence, George 
said : 

“ Father.” The word came lingeringly. It 
was difficult to own in words the being whom 
Providence had thrown upon his exclusive 
care. 

Mr. Holmes’s eyes lighted and he answered 
eagerly, What ? ” 

We — you and I, father — are very poor.” 

“ Yes ; ” and the father rubbed his hands 
thoughtfully together and gazed into the fire. 
“ We are poor.’’ 

‘‘ We must do something.” 

“ What shall we do, George ? ” asked Mr. 
Holmes, without any apparent thought that 
he might have a voice in the matter. 

George felt discouraged over this perfect 


12 Three Successful Lives. 

passiveness, but replied — his father looked at 
him so questioningly : 

“We might go on with the school. You 
would be willing to teach one or two classes, 
would you not, father ? ” 

“ I teach?” There was a momentary flash 
of the eyes, a momentary proud, hopeful ex- 
pression, and then, all the light dying out of 
his face, he answered, “ I can’t remember.” 

George was in a quandary. “You can go 
over the lessons for the following day with me 
at night — over and over if necessary — and by 
so doing perhaps your memory will return.” 

The enthusiasm he succeeded in manifest- 
ing had its effect, and Mr. Holmes wanted 
to begin immediately. So George, although 
the question of the school was by no means 
decided, brought out an arithmetic and spell- 
ing-book, and, opening them at random, had 
his father explain this rule and that word. 

It went along very well for awhile ; then 
there was a pause, a vacant look, and then his 
father despairingly said, “The thoughts I 
want wont come.” 

George suggested this and that, went 
through both questions and answers himself 
for a few minutes, and then, the half-paralyzed 


George and his Father. 13 

senses gaining power again, the lesson was 
successfully continued. 

No heart could have remained cold under 
the desperate attempts the scholar made to 
meet the expectations of his teacher. George’s 
quick, impressible nature was deeply stirred, 
but, at the same time, there remained his bit- 
ter grief for his mother, and his sorrow over 
his altered prospects. The lesson gave him 
so much hope of his father’s final recovery that 
he started out, just after the twilight had gath- 
ered, to make his proposal to Mr. Winthrop. 

He soon came out on Fifth Avenue, down 
which he pursued his walk. How many times 
he had carried heavily laden baskets of im- 
maculate linen to the basements of some of 
those stately mansions towering up so brown 
and high and cold. How many times he had 
waited by those little iron gates for his moth- 
er, and how often had he looked at her tired, 
pale face, paler in the moonlight as she came 
out, and longed for the time when he should 
be a man. i 

And now that time was drawing near. The 
tall houses still stood ; the iron gates with 
their cold latches were the same ; the broad 
light still flashed out on the pavement ; linen 


14 


Three Successful Lives. 


was washed and carried and paid for as of 
yore; but his mother’s hands, those dear 
hands, had been since those cold, dark times 
clothed upon with perfect rest, and, far, far 
above the stateliest mansion on the wide avenue 
on which New York’s millionaires dwelt, was 
a mansion not made with hands, where that 
dear mother dwelt. Bentie’s mother was 
there, too. Suddenly the dark unbelief lurk- 
ing in his heart asked the questions, “Are 
they there ? Is God merciful ? Am I not for- 
ever doomed to bitterness and a curse?” 
These thoughts made God and heaven and 
the sky, with its countless golden stars, 
seem so infinitely distant that the little spark 
of hope quivering in his heart very nearly 
died out. 

He continued his walk like an old man 
whose time was too short for plans or anticipa- 
tions. He passed by the hotel, which had had 
richness in food and apartment and outside 
respectability for many, and nothing for his 
father when he had sat friendless in the rain. 
The clock with its black face was still there. 
The stages and carriages rattled by, filled with 
life and beauty. An art-gallery, through whose 
windows shone out, to the eyes of rich and 


George and his Father. 15 

poor, Arcadian landscapes and forms of stately 
women and brave men, attracted his gaze. 

There was one picture quite filling the 
breadth of one of the windows that invited his 
special attention. 

In the background of the painting was a 
fire-place shaded by a mantel, in whose shadow 
sat a child. The ashes on the fender, the 
wood-work around the fire-place, the garments 
of the child, her hair, her eyes, her complexion, 
were in a soft gray that suggested Cinderella 
even before he discovered that such was the 
title of the painting. 

As he gazed at her slender arms, too emaci- 
ated for perfect beauty, but exquisite in shape ; 
at her broad, smooth, thoughtful brow; her 
delicate, pure features, and their expression 
of subdued longing, he forgot every thing 
around him, forgot himself, and lived over the 
old fairy tale as though it were a reality before 
his very eyes. 

He gradually noticed the two magnificent 
women in the foreground — the step-sisters. 
Their compact, stately forms, their handsome, 
rounded throats, their glossy hair and skin so 
soft that it had a human look, challenged his 
admiration, but not his heart. The sorrowful. 


i6 Three Successful Lives. 

childish, neglected little figure was the fore- 
ground to him, and he looked and longed un- 
til he unconsciously stretched out his hands 
in sympathy. 

This act brought him to himself. Could he 
then feel such real, true sorrow for what was 
but the representation of a fairy-tale and shut 
his heart to his father as he had done? And 
then, thinking further, he knew that he had 
pitied Cinderella because she seemed to repre- 
sent all of the bright and beautiful scenes for 
which he had himself longed. So he was only 
pitying himself after all ! George was too 
much of a man to do so consciously, and he 
tried to shake off the feeling by thinking of 
others who, with all with which he had to con- 
tend, had not had his start. 

Cinderella had found her palaces, her suc- 
cess ; he would, too. Others had begun just 
as low as he and had succeeded. In the face 
of all obstacles he would overcome. If his 
mother were not in heaven, she was somewhere 
— of that he was sure. And for her he would 
work, for her he would achieve as of old. 

He walked now with a quick, resolute step. 
He passed Delmonico’s, with its flower-urns, 
and the gleam of handsomely set tables 


George and his Father. 17 

through its broad, low windows. Some day 
he would take a dinner there if he chose; and 
then, with an odd mixture of the ambitions 
which surge in every poor, aspiring American 
boy’s breast, and a sense of the manly respon- 
sibilities devolving on himself, he ascended the 
steps of Bentie’s home and rang the bell. 

The chandeliers were in a blaze. The rich 
velvet and brocatel, the pictures and the mirl 
rors, the statuary and the fire, and through 
the distant doors the gleam from the conserva- 
tory, made George, coming from the cold and 
from his air-castles, feel as though some fairy 
godmother had brought him hither, if not in 
a pumpkin-shell, yet by some means quite as 
unreal. 

He did not much resemble the George 
whose acquaintance we made at the public 
school. He had shot right up, as boys and 
girls do sometimes in a year. His athletic ex- 
ercises at college had straightened the shoul- 
ders once quite bent, and his face had gained 
that indefinable expression which association 
with the refined and cultured produces. He 
wore a well-fitting suit of clothes which had 
cost a whole month of Mrs. Holmes’ earnings, 
and a suit she had sent on to him for his birth- 


1 8 Three Successful Lives. 

day, which had occurred just a week before 
she died. 

So George, although he felt that the ele- 
gant apartments were greatly beyond his own 
home surroundings, handsomely dressed, tall, 
erect, a look of almost solemn but earnest in- 
telligence breathing from his face, appeared 
just the kind of a caller such a girl as Bentie 
might have, as she entered the parlor. 

She was more than glad to see him. She 
had felt hurt and repelled by his cold, reserved 
manner in the morning ; but then, after com- 
ing home and reviewing with her father that 
day of long ago when she had been left moth- 
erless and all her longings for mother-love 
and sympathy were destined to rise and rise 
again and die unanswered, she altogether for- 
gave George, and spent the day in devising 
a hundred plans, quite as magnificent as her 
first ones, for his welfare, and then, as her ex- 
perience suggested that they were imprac- 
ticable, shattering their airy proportions. 

“ Papa has not come home yet, George, and 
I am glad, for I want to see you myself a 
little, first. I was vexed this morning and 
yesterday, too, when you would not let me 
speak to you.” 


George and his Father. 19 

“ What do you mean ? ’’ asked George, sur- 
prised. 

“ Why ” — and Bentie hesitated, having 
thought that her first remark would be better 
understood, and afraid now to continue. But 
George insisted on knowing. “ You treated 
us all as if we were enemies.” 

“O ! ” And George, looking quite relieved, 
and then half-smiling, gently replied : “ It 
was not that, Bentie. I still have the same 
feeling that prompted me to act thus.” 

George, considering his pride, was speak- 
ing very plainly. It was this,” he continued, 
brushing back the hair from his expressive 
brow : “ you had all been so faithful in trying 
to lift my mother and myself above the sphere 
in which you found us, and we were trying 
to do what we could, and then this curse 
came upon us to disappoint you and discour- 
age me.” 

“ George ! George !” Bentie expostulated, 
“ we never tried to lift you above your sphere ; 
we simply broke down the barriers that shut 
you in a too-narrow circle. And O, do you 
suppose that for a minute we could ask a 
higher success for our plans than has come to 
pass ? One of you has gone home by a road 
2 


20 Three Successful Lives. 

of faithful duty and self-denial we any of us 
might wish to travel could we have the grace 
to go so humbly and uncomplainingly. God 
himself brought your father back to you that 
you might, for the first of all the works we 
believe you are to do, bring him to a saving 
knowledge of honor. We have been assured 
through your success in college that we did 
not mistake your ability. Why, George, 
while considering all of these providences 
through the day, I have been led to say, over 
and over, ‘ I will ’ always ‘ lift up mine eyes 
unto the “ Lord,” from whence cometh my 
help.’ I should think all of these things 
would make you cling very closely to God ; 
they do me.” 

“ How do you know that they are from the 
Lord?” replied George in a tone of bitter- 
ness. 

How do I know? ” Bentie paused, and then 
her face brightening radiantly, she replied with 
full assurance, “ Why, George, I know it.” 

There was that in her tone and her look 
and his knowledge of her pure, conscientious 
life, that made George feel reverential for a 
moment : 

There must be something in it,” he said 


George and his Father. 21 

to himself. “ Bentie and Ben, and a score of 
practical Christians with whom I am ac- 
quainted, would not make these assertions out 
of vanity or from imaginary comfort;” and 
then, more than all, Bentie, he knew, believed, 
as his mother had done, through her heart, 
through love. 

“ I believe you are right, Bentie. I want 
to think you are,” and then pausing, and with 
a great effort, he said: “I feel so horribly 
tempted, sometimes, when I do not believe 
any thing, that I hope you will never, never 
lose your faith in God, who, I know, exists, 
but who I cannot altogether believe is mer- 
ciful and pays attention to our small con- 
cerns. I wish — ” and George looked as if he 
half believed himself a simpleton. 

What ? ” asked Bentie, as he paused. 

I wish you would pray for me.” 

“ Really, George ? ” and her eyes lighted 
with pleasure and hope. She looked so sur- 
prised and yet so delighted, that, feeling he 
had made a novel request, he laughed, but re- 
plied quite earnestly, 

“ Yes.” 

“ Then, George,” said Bentie emphatically, 
“ you are going to be converted.” 


22 


Three Successful Lives. 

‘‘ Don’t be too sure.” And George smiled 
over her resolute manner. 

I have never prayed for any body’s con- 
version yet in vain, and I am exceedingly 
anxious for yours.” 

“ O !” And beginning to feel uncomfortable 
under the impression her manner conveyed to 
him, namely, that he was now obliged to be 
converted, he rejoined : 

“ I’m a stubborn case ; I will wear your pa- 
tience out.” 

But not my prayers, George. You do not 
know how much God and the manner in 
which he works fill my mind. Tm a Method- 
ist, of course, a real free-grace one, and yet — ” 
Bentie hesitated, at a loss to explain herself, 
and George, growing deeply interested in the 
fair expositor, sat down to listen. “ I know 
that Christ has answered ever and ever so 
many of my prayers for the smallest things, 
and a great many for large blessings. Now 
some of these, of course, have been things that 
other people did not want at the time, conver- 
sions you know, and such things. So while it 
was free grace for me, it was a kind of predes- 
tination for them, you see. Now, in this kind 
of predestination I am a very blue Presbyte- 


George and his Father. 23 

rian. I’m just as sure as sure can be that, if 
I pray with sufficient earnestness and live 
sufficiently near to God, my prayers will be 
answered. I want you to be converted more 
than any body I know. You are talented, 
George. God is king right here on earth. I 
feel that he will use your talents to your own 
prosperity and his glory, if you give up every 
thing to him. You can amount to a great 
deal more if you are a Christian than if you 
are not.” 

Mr. Winthrop coming in at this juncture, 
the conversation was changed. 

But George had received a message that he 
could not forget, and that message was to go 
with him until he deciphered its mysteries into 
tidings of great joy. 

“ Well, George,” and Mr. Winthrop, with ex- 
tended hand, advanced to meet his young 
friend, “ I am glad to see you. You are my 
boy, you know.” 

George flushed slightly and then, looking 
up into the strong, smiling face beside him, 
said, with boyish earnestness, I wish I were, 
Mr. Winthrop.” 

That is not right. There is the material 
in your father, my boy ”~and Mr. Winthrop 


24 Three Successful Lives. 

placed his hands on George’s shoulders — “ to 
make such a man as I could never be. For 
every ambitious thirst for fame and knowl- 
edge, for your ready talent in debate, you are 
to thank that father whom you have cursed in 
your heart. Because he has given you the 
gift of talent, bless him in his humiliation, 
love him with the love of a son, and, when 
the hour comes, as I am sure it will, when you 
shall receive honor and renown, so guide and 
assist your father, that at that glad time his 
virtuous gray locks will be your highest praise. 
‘ Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy 
days may be long upon the land which the 
Lord thy God giveth thee.’ ” 

“ O, Mr. Winthrop, there was no trouble 
about mother ! ” and George, overcome with 
emotion, broke down. 

“ The command is honor, whether that 
honor comes spontaneously or not.” 

“I’ll work for father; I’m too proud to do 
otherwise ; and I’ll own him. But the love — ” 
and George looked with a wicked gleam in his 
eyes — “ it is hate.” 

Mr. Winthrop was touched by the suffering 
the lad was undergoing; but he understood 
human nature well enough to know that George 


George and his Father. 25 

would lose more than he would gain by shut- 
ting out sympathy for the erring. 

“ My boy, if you work uncomplainingly and 
unceasingly for your father, and if you own 
him unreservedly, that is, honor him in your 
conduct toward him and in all you say of 
him, you will redeem him. His redemption 
through you will awaken such a love in your 
heart as you would never otherwise have had.” 

George was trembling from suppressed ex- 
citement. He said, finally, but as if the de- 
cision had cost him a desperate effort, “ Til 
try to do as you say. But it ivill be trying for 
awhile.” 

“ That is right, George. The question to 
be settled now is. How are your father and 
you to be supported?” 

I have considered that matter.” And 
George related the school project and his 
father’s attempt to learn. 

Bentie’s eyes filled with tears to overflow- 
ing, and Mr. Winthrop, full of sympathy for 
the ambitious boy, gave not only his consent 
but the warmest encouragement. 

“ But,” he asked, “ when are you to finish 
your college course ? ” 

“ O ! ” And George’s determination having 


26 


Three Successful Lives. 


risen as he had proceeded, he replied, “ I’ll be 
like that Methodist preacher who, when asked 
where he graduated, said, ‘ On horseback from 
the itinerancy.’ I shall have a graduation, 
but not from Middletown.” 

“ I am willing, George, to provide for your 
father and advance the money for your college 
career if you feel like accepting.” 

“ Never! ” And George’s eyes flashed. “ I 
took the other debt, but it weighed on me like 
a nightmare ; and I felt as certain as one can 
of any thing in this life that I could pay it off. 
But you see how things have turned. I think 
if Bentie had any free-grace or predestination 
views on this subject, she would say that I 
was predestined to pay as I go, instead of 
blocking out my days of settling as I choose.” 

Mr. Winthrop looked at Bentie inquiringly, 
who, smiling, replied : 

“We had a short doctrinal talk on other 
matters before you came in — that was all.” 

Her father, who had really hoped that 
George would answer as he had done, replied : 

“ You are right ; and, although I think that 
the Lord is trying you severely, yet he will 
bless you accordingly, if you keep up your 
courage. I really think that your duty is to 


George and his Father. 27 

stay by your father and complete the work 
which I believe your mother successfully be- 
gan. And it is different working for two than 
for one. The speculation might be called a 
risky one if you continued it.” 

“ It has been as it is. I may be a long time 
in paying the debt I already owe you, but it 
shall be squared, interest and all, if I live.” 

“And if you should not,” replied Mr. Win- 
throp, laughingly, “ I will have a sheriff s sale 
of your household goods.” 

He made George laugh heartily before set- 
tling down to an earnest talk with him in re- 
gard to the management of the school. 

When the clock striking eight reminded 
the boy of his father left alone, he rose, say- 
ing : “ Then to-morrow morning I will go out 
and bring the scholars back and begin in ear- 
nest. I am strong, and I think I can snatch 
time for study after father is in bed.” 

“ Good-bye,” said Bentie, holding out both 
hands, and shaking George’s trembling, ex- 
cited ones, warmly. “ Good-bye, George ; 
though I shall be back at college and busy 
with my studies, I shall pray daily for you un- 
til you are converted. Our talk was about 
that,” she explained, turning to her father. 


28 Three Successful Lives. 

George went out from the elegant but 
home-like mansion, and again walked past the 
houses which, earlier in the evening, had 
loomed so cold and forbidding before his eyes. 
He thought now that there was fire behind 
the brown stone, and suffering and loving 
hearts there, and hopes and disappointments, 
and — well, all of that motley building of air- 
castles and putting aside of cloud-capped 
dreams that every human heart born into this 
changing world understands sooner or later 
only too well. 

Two days later the boys and girls were in 
their accustomed place. 

Job, who had quietly bidden George good- 
bye and left his room at Mrs. Holmes’, lest 
George might not want him, was reinstated. 
The little fellow, after finding a bed as best he 
could in cheap lodging-houses when nights 
were stormy, and under sheds and upturned 
carts when the weather was fair, dropped into 
his accustomed place with such a thankful heart 
as only homeless boys and girls have for mere 
food and shelter. Job had found a warm 
friend in George, who had put the child’s an- 
gular and blunt letter away among a few other 
mementos of his mother. 


George and his Father. 29 

It was a warm and sunny April morning on 
which the school gathered together once more. 
There were two chairs instead of one in Mrs. 
Holmes’ accustomed place. Order had been 
called, and George v/as about to assign lessons, 
when he felt a hand on his arm. He looked 
up to meet his father’s eyes. ‘‘ Your mother 
began the day with prayer.” 

The cover of the book George held open 
fell from his grasp. “ Had Bentie prayed for 
him ? Was his mother in the room to in- 
fluence? Was God whispering?” The boy 
was surprised and impressed, and after a min- 
ute’s silence, said : “ Children, we will pray.” 

Silently every little head was bent. “ The 
Lord’s Prayer,” the father whispered, as his 
son paused. 

In broken tones, while thinking of the prayer 
as he had never done before, he began, “ Our 
Father.” Softly, reverently, beseechingly, the 
gaunt man at his side joined in. “ Lead us 
not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” 

As the little school opened so it continued : 
prayer every morning, two chairs every morn- 
ing, in which father and son sat. There were 
days of weakness for the father and ever- 
growing strength for the son. There were 


30 Three Successful Lives. 

days when mind seemed to fail from the 
one and an intellectual improvement for the 
other seemed set aside. But as time went on 
there were fewer and fewer of these draw- 
backs. When the June vacation came the 
kingly intellect had seated itself firmly on its 
throne, the hands once so weak had found 
strength to sign a pledge against strong drink, 
and had presented that same pledge to every 
boy and girl in the school. 

George, although he had not paid a cent on 
his debt, had not failed to make both ends of 
their current expenses meet. In the coming 
autumn, if his father were even as strong then 
as now, he foresaw an opportunity for long 
evenings for student work. Thus, through 
disappointment, his chastened grief, his moral 
strength, and the love slowly growing for his 
father, hope returned and his ambition mount- 
ed up as on eagles’ wings. 


Ben’s Graduation. 


31 


IL 


BEN’S GRADUATION. 



E must now pass over quite an interval 
of time. It is two years from the date 
of the close of the last chapter. June 
is here, with its balmy air and gentle skies and 
sweet flowers. Bentie has just passed her ex- 
aminations for Junior, and Ben wanders about 
the pleasant town, which will be forever dear 
to him as the scene of his college days, with a 
great feeling of impatience, and much pride, 
which the home letters and the letters from 
Bentie and from George serve to strengthen. 

The faculty of the college had individually 
shaken hands with Ben and congratulated him 
on the fact of being elected valedictorian of 
his class. The Freshmen looked upon him 
with that awe so dear to a Senior’s heart. The 
Sophomores, in trying to ape his culture, wis- 
dom, and popularity, showed their apprecia- 
tion of the person Ben named me. The Jun- 
iors, though seldom in words admitting any 


32 Three Successful Lives. 

virtue outside of their class, were, neverthe- 
less, delighted when Ben placed himself on a 
familiar footing with them. Every member of 
his own class which, after studying college 
Talmuds, had decided themselves to be by all 
odds the most brilliant, original, elegant, and 
inspiring class that had ever been passed, and 
contemplated graduation, voted in words and 
acts that their valedictorian was a regular 
“ brick.” Seniors in senior vacation will em- 
ploy slang. 

In the inner side of his vest, next his heart, 
Ben wore a half-dozen thicknesses of paper 
covered with hieroglyphics, which he knew, 
however, meant his valedictory, and which his 
bosom friends to whom he had deciphered them 
declared eloquent. So, being all in readiness 
for the crowning day of a collegiate’s life, he 
gave himself up, like a young athlete as he 
was, to excursions on the river, to long strolls, 
and to daily practice for a boat-race to come 
off in July. 

Now I suppose you would like to know 
just how Ben looks and what kind of a young 
man we are about to launch upon the world. 

Well, dear boys and girls, just remember 
that the person telling you this story does not 


Ben’s Graduation. 


33 


believe in genius, never having met any one 
who could not be just what he or she is through 
sheer work ; neither does Ben’s biographer 
believe in perfect beauty, never having seen 
an Apollo Belvedere outside of an art-gal- 
lery. 

To begin : Ben is now what may be termed 
a very promising young man. He is out of his 
teens. He is twenty-one. He is six feet high 
and is broad accordingly. His brown eyes 
do not wear quite so solemn an expression as 
they did five years ago. His firm, honest, in- 
telligent mouth will be accepted by you all as 
properly advanced, since on each side of its 
bow curls a thick brown mustache, of which 
Ben is never for a moment unconscious. It is 
his first care in the morning and his last 
thought at night. He is as fond of bugs and 
frogs as he was when, a reserved boy, he first 
met Bentie at Camp Tabor. The only differ- 
ence between the Ben of then and now is that 
the present one is at no loss for subjects other 
than scientific on which to occasionally dis- 
course to young ladies. 

In short, Ben finds girls agreeable, whether 
they can talk on his side of the question or 
not, provided they can talk — something. 


34 


Three Successful Lives. 


As to his scholarship, Ben has had tuggings 
and disappointments since George left ; but 
steadily, unfailingly, he has led his class be- 
cause he has worked to do so. It was the 
hope he cherished when he entered college, 
and he has done all he could to realize that 
hope. Diligent, faithful study has crowned 
his efforts with victory. 

Every body who speaks of him calls him a 
fine fellow,” a capable young man,” “ a 
youth of decided ability ; ” but I never heard 
any one, not even a Sophomore, call him a 
genius. Are not some of you comforted ? 

Several clergymen have asked him to enter 
the ministry ; but he has, after examining him- 
self, felt sure that he had no call and has saved 
that loftiest of all professions from a clog. 
Almost all of his learned friends have asked 
him what profession he intended to follow, 
and, to the surprise of some, he has answered, 
I intend to learn a trade.” 

“ Why, Mr. Stanton,” said a young lady, 
shocked on receiving this piece of information, 
I am surprised. Leave the trades for those 
who cannot aspire to any thing higher.” 

“ Miss Finickety,” said Ben, with great de- 
cision, trades in America are professions. I 


Ben’s Graduation. 35 

intend to be a practico-scientific iron manu- 
facturer.” 

“ O — a prac — on a large scale then ? ” 

Ben’s eyes twinkled as he added, with much 
earnestness, “ I am going to work by the day — 
hammer, puddle, and so forth, with my sleeves 
rolled up.” 

“ O ! ” and Miss Finickety averted her eyes 
and held up both hands in dismay. “ You 
will be so soiled looking, so black, so grimy. 
It cannot be true, Mr. Stanton.” 

But Ben declared that it was, and concluded : 
“ Did you ever know cf any thing beautiful 
and noble in this world that did not have a 
beginning in dust, or toil, or homeliness? 
Flowers, my dear Miss Finickety, precious 
stones, the food we eat, the fire we burn, have 
had a burial in the earth. They could not 
rise did they not. So,” he added, “ I am 
going to be planted near an iron-mine until I 
am sprouted into an iron manufacturer.” 

“ You dreadful man ! ” and Miss Finickety, 
who was as pretty a girl as one ordinarily 
meets, looked quite bewildered. 

Ben glanced up at the ceiling, then out on 
the lawn and around Miss Finickety’s hand- 
some parlor, and his eyes softened and his 
3 


36 Three Successful Lives. 

mouth had that expression which the most 
rollicking boys and men can assume when 
their admiration is awakened by genuine girls 
or brave women. His thoughts, however, 
were far above Miss Finickety, as he said : 

“ Why, I know a young lady — accomplished 
— she plays the piano and makes it say, too, 
something besides ‘ Tiddle de dum, tiddle de 
dee;’ she speaks French, and once in a great 
while sings Italian songs — she prefers En- 
glish ones, however ; she has studied mathe- 
matical astronomy and translated Latin po- 
etry into English verse ; and she can cook and 
keep house — and she told me that I was a 
brave, noble man because I was going to 
learn a trade. Now, what do you think of all 
that ? ” And Ben looked down on his listener 
with great gravity. 

O, you have been off on an adventure 
somewhere and made believe that you were an 
ignoramus, and the young lady has wanted to 
encourage you. College boys are never to be 
trusted.” 

“ No, she can read me like a book — at least 
she says so. She has read what I am to de- 
liver on that awful day, and approves it ; and, 
by the way, I am expecting her on the next 


Ben’s Graduation. 


37 


boat, and it is time it was here,” looking at 
his watch. ** Excuse my haste,” Ben ex- 
claimed, making a sudden exit into the hall 
and on to the piazza. He looked back to be- 
hold Miss Finickety transfixed with astonish- 
ment and disappointment over the fact that 
the valedictorian could part with her society 
with so little reluctance. 

The steamer was just in sight as Ben reached 
the wharf. How blue the June sky was! 
how glittering the water! how happy every 
body looked ! What if Bentie were not on 
board ? 

On the steamer came, growing larger and 
larger as her majestic proportions drew near. 
Her decks, laden with passengers, were white 
with fluttering handkerchiefs. 

Some one was leaning over the railing and 
shaking a square of cambric vehemently. O, 
that is Trot — or Rose, as we should say, since 
she has learned to dislike her baby name. She 
had the old manner, and the same flashing eyes, 
now wild with excitement lest Ben should 
not see her first. Behind her were his father 
and mother, Mr. Winthrop and Mrs. Ruther- 
ford. Where was Bentie? Ben’s heart sank 
as he tried, what would have seemed a hope- 


38 Three Successful Lives. 

less task, to discover a familiar face among 
hundreds close together. But he did find it. 

Off in the only empty spot on all the deck, 
with her face somewhat turned from the shore, 
stood Bentie, listening to something very in- 
teresting that George was saying. 

Ben felt as if every thought and every look 
should have been concentrated on himself at 
this august epoch in his life. While he was 
nursing this opinion Bentie turned her head, 
discovered that they were at their journey’s 
end, and, leaning over the rail, her bright eyes 
beaming and her whole face wreathed in 
smiles, waved her hat to Ben, as she could not, 
in her eagerness, find her handkerchief. 

Ben forgot every thing then but that she 
saw him, and he was at hand at the gangway 
to help them all off and stow them into the 
carriages in waiting in such a way that George 
and Bentie and himself, much to Rose’s dis- 
may, were the only occupants of the smaller 
one. Thus they drove through the long, 
wide, elm-shaded streets to the hotel, where 
they met again to ask a hundred questions 
and laugh over a hundred jokes. 

“ We have refurnished the library, taken up 
the old carpet, the drugget, and so forth, and 


Ben’s Graduation. 39 

filled the walls with handsome cases. The old 
books look quite new.” 

“ Pshaw ! ” Ben drew a wry face, and then, 
glancing at Bentie, said, “ You can see mother 
thinks there are no more boys around. Moth- 
er, darling, have you handcuffs and ankle- 
bands in the new library to fasten me in such 
a way that I will not get myself or any thing 
out of order?” 

Mrs. Stanton looked disappointed, and Trot 
thoroughly disgusted, as she said, “ Why, Ben, 
every thing in the room is in perfect harmony. 
There isn’t a scratch to be seen. I think the 
library is even handsomer than Bentie’s.” 

“ I dare say it is beautiful ; ” and Ben, putting 
his arms around his mother’s neck and bring- 
ing his eyes down to hers, she saw how moist 
the brown orbs were, and then understood it all. 
‘‘ You see, mother, I feel as though the boy 
part of me were slipping away with the spots 
and scars and faded furniture of the library. 

“ Your room is not changed, Ben.” 

O well, then it is all right.” All this was 
said so rapidly that no one else heard it. 

The hotels were full of the friends of the 
collegiates, and the town was gay, to Bentie s 
delight and Trot’s ecstasy. 


40 Three Successful Lives. 

Although Bentie was nearly twenty years 
old and Trot but twelve it was the latter who 
felt the deepest anxiety about immaculate 
boots, perfectly fitting gloves, and “just the 
right shade for my complexion.” Still Trot’s 
wardrobe was a sensible one, every garment 
being girlish and simple ; and she had a 
■ clean, neat look, which was wanting in some 
of the misses, who were so ruffled that they 
looked like four-decked steam-boats in west- 
ern rivers. Her blonde hair, heavy, shining, 
and fine, tied back with blue ribbons, was the 
only gold she wore. As of old, and in spite 
of herself, she was Ben’s shadow, until he be- 
thought him of a docile Freshman whom his 
sister would enjoy training. After this ar- 
rangement was made there was peace in the 
camp during the remainder of their stay. 

But if Trot were disposed of it was other- 
wise with George. He had neither eyes nor ears 
for any other of the numerous young ladies but 
Bentie, and as Bentie herself seemed just as 
glad to be with George as with him, Ben ac- 
cepted matters gracefully, and really admired 
Bentie all the more. So they were an insep- 
arable trio. 

What were George’s feelings, his thoughts. 


Ben’s Graduation. 


41 


as he walked beneath the shading elms and 
looked from his old window, and met the 
honor men, and heard the criticisms of the 
faculty on this one or that. How did 
George’s compare with the fifty minds that 
were to stand up before the world before tak- 
ing a formal farewell of regular discipline ? 

Well, the two years, over which we have in 
a half hour glided, had not been fruitless, so 
far as appearance went. He looked more a 
man than did Ben. As tall, as broad, as erect 
as his friend, there was that in the lines about 
his cheeks which told of a long struggle and 
a victory. There was that about the large, 
firm, straight mouth which betokened an in- 
domitable will. Out from the deep eyes shone 
a steady, intelligent, concentrated light, that 
was all that had even been needed to govern 
his little school. It was light that won him 
respect, confidence, and attention wherever he 
went. All through the two years of drudgery 
never a week had passed without seeing him 
either at Mrs. Stanton’s or Mrs. Rutherford’s. 

For the boys reading what I write I will 
say that there is nothing that so refines a boy 
as the companionship and influence of mature 
and elegant women. In this respect George, 


42 Three Successful Lives. 

the past two years, had made up in his social 
training what had been wanting when he and 
Ben were little boys together in the grammar 
school. 

Night after night had seen him going to the 
Cooper Institute to attend the lectures which 
have been a bles^ng to so many struggling 
young men. Many a midnight hour had seen 
him in his mother’s arm-chair, the current pa- 
pers and periodicals at his side, his strong and 
active mind studying and passing comments 
on all of interest occurring in the busy, active 
world. 

He could by no means have passed some of 
the examinations in which Ben had, a month 
ago, shone so brilliantly; but, in all questions 
of State and finance, in all rules on oratory and 
literature, he could have taken his second de- 
gree. And he knew that with time and op- 
portunity the rest would come. 

While studying, working, and achieving 
the redemption of his father, he had paid 
his debt to Mr. Stanton and saved enough 
money to buy himself a handsome suit and 
defray his expenses incident to commence- 
ment week. 

Ben, though he was valedictorian, felt and 


Ben’s Graduation. 


43 

knew that his old friend, if not in some things, 
yet in others, stood beside him. 

All the members of the class wanted George 
for an escort for some of their fair friends. 
George had always been in many senses a boy 

of one idea. It was Ben and Bentie who had 

* 

seen years ago beneath the patches and the 
poverty. It was Ben and Bentie who had 
been in one way and another his pole-stars. 
Here he was with a whole week on his hands 
and that week’s happiness depended, to him, 
on being near the two whose friendship had 
never for an instant waned. So, though he 
received the introductions, and said what must 
be said before two persons know a single thing 
about each other, he seldom went further, and 
generally, in half an hour’s time, gravitated to 
his post by Ben or Bentie. 

Now I suppose that some of you think he 
must have been a bore. He would have been, 
perhaps, if he had not, with his growth, de- 
veloped such a fund of dry humor that those 
who knew him well were always glad to make 
him welcome. 

Commencement day canie, fair, pleasant, 
with a balmy breeze blowing up from the river, 
and odorous with a hundred floral offerings, 


44 Three Successful Lives. 

The church was crowded long before the 
time. Up in the gallery, where Ben had 
placed them so that he would be sure to see 
them, sat his friends. Bentie and George and 
Trot and his mother were all in a row, and be- 
hind them the re^t of those who felt an hon- 
est pride in “ their boy.” 

How sweet Bentie looked in her modest 
gray dress and drooping hat, with its soft gray 
and white feathers. She wore nothing to 
heighten the effect of the gray with her fresh 
young face but a beautiful coral necklace rest- 
ing around the dainty ruffle at her throat and 
upon the silk of her white tie. Yes, there was 
more color about her ; she held in her lap a 
bouquet of flowers which she herself had ar- 
ranged and which looked like the fit offering 
from one so artless and so lovable. 

George and Trot had flowers in their laps 
also. In fact, the whole party, arranged as 
they were, were not unlike a flower pyramid. 

Trot leaned over to Bentie and whispered : 
“ I think Ben will get as many flowers as any 
body else. I hope he will have the most ; ” 
surveying, meanwhile, as many flowers as were 
in sight. 

That would not make them any the sweeter 


Ben’s Graduation. 


45 

to Ben, I hope,” and Bentie looked a little re- 
proachfully into Trot’s eyes. 

“ Well, he is valedictorian ! ” 

“ O ! ” and Bentie smiled. “ Perhaps that 
should make a difference.” 

At length the music begark 
Into the packed audience-room filed the 
fifty Seniors, and, with the gravity which be- 
came Seniors, took their seats. On the rostrum 
the trustees, the faculty, and the influential 
friends ” of the college arranged themselves. 

The music ceased. Prayer was offered. A 
salutatory was announced. 

A tall young man, with much gravity and a 
look upon his face as if he were going to try 
his skill in some other than his mother 
tongue, advanced. Trot, at this solemn mo- 
ment, giggled. 

Bentie stepped on the small boot, (which, I 
am sorry to say. Trot insisted on having a tight 
fit, to appear before her brother’s friends,) and 
Trot, to Bentie’s dismay, uttered a short, sti- 
fled O ! ” • 

The salutatorian heard it while revolving,” 
as Virgil says, his first Latin sentence in his 
mind, and, glancing imploringly at the gallery, 
he bowed — whether to Trot or to the President 


46 Three Successful Lives. 

of the college will remain forever uncertain — 
and began. 

Of course every body, even the children, 
looked exceedingly knowing while the classical 
young man opened his hands and extended 
his arms at four various times : first to the 
faculty, then to the trustees, then to the 
‘‘ friends,” then to his class. He drew alarm- 
ingly near to the edge of the rostrum, and 
Ben, notwithstanding the task soon to be de- 
volved upon himself, was seized with a great 
longing to laugh over the picture he made of 
the Latin orator suddenly losing his footing 
and plunging headfirst into the midst of his 
class. But at last the final sentence with its 
high sounding vowels was pronounced, and the 
first speaker, amid vociferous applause, took his 
seat. 

Every thing that was said by every one 
was, of course, received with unqualified ap- 
proval. The learned poem by the class poet 
was applauded until the class really thought 
that it had given birth to a genius. 

At last, at last, Ben ascended the rostrum. 
Trot grasped her flowers with both hands. 
George’s mouth contracted for an instant, and 
his heart gave a great aching throb. He 


Ben’s Graduation. 


47 


longed to stand at that moment where his 
friend stood. Then, a trifle paler, his face 
relaxed, and, with all the fondness of a broth- 
er, he bent forward to watch Ben. Bentie 
thought for a moment of the examination in 
the grammar-school five years before. Then 
her thoughts leaped over the two remaining 
years of her college life to her graduation, and 
then, like a bird, as she sometimes seemed, 
smoothing down her gray plumage, she felt 
a great admiration and respect for “ Ben.” 

And Mr. and Mrs. Stanton ! Well, whether 
you are in college or in school, or whether you 
know very little of either place, let me tell you 
that there is nothing more inspiring and at 
the same time saddening to a parent than the 
day when a son or a daughter steps before a 
host of watchful eyes, across that stream which 
divides boy and girl life from the responsibili- 
ties of manhood and womanhood. 

Here was Ben, their son, who, through 
twenty-one years of life, had never, in word or 
act, disgraced them, standing before the world 
with the highest college honor to grace his 
career. 

Hereafter it would not entirely be they who 
would plan his life and fulfill his destiny. As 


48 Three Successful Lives. 

they behold him erect, slightly flushed, and 
full of suppressed emotion, they looked back 
upon his childhood and his boyhood, as we 
gaze at the lingering twilight of a day whose 
sun some time ago sank to rest in the far 
West. Tears of pride and of loving duty ful- 
filled and of strong hope for his future dimmed 
their eyes as, with trembling voice, he sketched 
the history of the class and pointed to those 
heights of thought and act to which each one 
was to aspire. Then pausing, his broad chest 
heaving, his clear eyes uplifted, he pointed 
upward while, through the open windows rus- 
tled, like angels’ wings, the soft murmur of the 
summer breezes. With Christian earnestness 
and with the inspiration of a living faith he 
bade his classmates scale those heights of 
spiritual experience found in a sacred nearness 
to the embodiment of all good — Jesus Christ. 

George covered his eyes at this juncture. 
Ben was inconceivably ahead of him when he 
could feel and talk thus. Outwardly, the two 
lives were faultless. Inwardly, Ben’s victories 
were what they were because he had learned 
to say “Abba, Father;” George’s, because 
pride and energy and intellect had been his 
monitors. 


Ben’s Graduation. 


49 


“ Ah,” George thought at that moment, “ if 
I but realized the inspiring comfort I see shin- 
ing in Ben’s face ; if I but knew that Christ 
lived for me, how life would be glorified ! ” He 
wept underneath the shadow of his hands. 

Bentie, guessing what was passing in his 
mind, renewed her prayer for his conversion, 
never doubting that it would be answered in 
the Lord’s good time. 

When Ben concluded there was no clap- 
ping. It did not occur to anyone to stir or 
exclaim. The silence, though, was a most 
eloquent tribute. After this expressive pause 
followed the floral shower. Trot threw her 
huge bouquet with great force. It came down 
squarely on her brother’s head as he was mak- 
ing his most graceful bow to the host before 
him. And then there was a revulsion. Then 
the applause came. 

Ben, with ready ingenuity, looking up at 
Rose’s mischievous face, offered her such a 
suggestive thank you, that every body ceased 
looking collegefied. The trustees’ faces shone 
as those of boys do when they have perpe- 
trated a joke. 

Thus Trot’s bouquet afforded Ben and his 
classmates an opportunity of forgetting them- 


50 


Three Successful Lives. 


selves as the center of attraction. Their faces 
were much shorter when they filed out of the 
church than when they filed in, and the con- 
gratulations they received when they were 
outside were of the merriest nature. 

Rose, panting and blushing to great advan- 
tage, took Ben’s hand in hers and said : “ You 
need not feel so important. Valedictorians are 
never heard of again after they graduate.” 

“Eh? Didn’t you hear from me?” Ben 
took the small face between his hands and 
made the blue eyes look straight into his. 

“ O, I’ll say y-e-s if you will on-ly let me 
g-o ! ’* she gasped at length, quite provoked 
that her brother had the better of her. 

“ I am sure that we shall hear more of Ben,” 
said George, warmly. “ He was not made 
valedictorian because he was a bookworm and 
nothing else.” 

“ No, indeed,” echoed Bentie ; “ Ben is too 
round to ever fit into a corner.” 

“ Do you think so ? ” And Ben looked 
eagerly into her admiring face. 

“01 am sure of it, since you are sensible 
enough to learn a trade.” 

“ Poor Miss Finickety ! ” was Ben’s rather 
strange reply. “ I wish that she had not given 


Ben’s Graduation. 5 1 

me, a day laborer, those flowers, and in such a 
grand basket. I am afraid I shall soil them.” 

Bentie told him to stop such unkind re- 
marks, and then, altogether forgetful for the 
time of George’s quiet presence, she left the 
church on Ben’fe arm. They talked quite like 
two old people about the foundry into which 
he, after a month’s respite from thought or 
toil of any kind, was to enter. 

“ I have always been told, Bentie, that my 
air-castles would dissolve in mist and fall in 
rain to the earth. But I declare they have 
so far proved too substantial for any such 
liquid state.” 

I hope, Ben, that you will always build 
them. People who never see any thing but 
the earth on the earth, and the sky in the sky, 
are stupid, and I don’t believe they accom- 
plish half as much as they might if they would 
once in awhile employ more than their two 
eyes.” 

Ben quite agreed with her, and then. Trot 
and her Freshman appearing, the talk became 
too general to make it worth my while to 

chronicle what was said. 

4 


52 


Three Successful Lives. 


III. 

ben as a manufacturer. 

S MONG the New Jersey hills, down in a 
deep hollow through which strug- 
gles a winding, impetuous stream, are 
extensive iron-works. This gorge is shaped 
like a letter V. At its apex is an irregular 
and picturesque mass of rocks over which falls 
the river, rising in spring and autumn to such 
dimensions that the surging waters, in their 
precipitous descent, echo and dash until the 
houses on the overlooking hills tremble and 
the windows rattle in their casements. 

The banks of the river, naturally steep and 
high, are made still more so by huge masses 
of cinder which have been emptied over them 
from time to time until the land immediately 
lining the stream is seamed and scarred and 
rough, as though some volcano had discharged 
a leaden and glazed mass along the gorge. 

Above the banks, on the left-hand side, tower 
hills whose soil, through the numerous springs 


Ben as a Manufacturer. 53 

with which it is penetrated, is moss-covered. 
They are shaded by a dense growth of hem- 
lock and chestnut. A broad and winding path 
curves along the side of these hills as far as 
the apex of the V, and beyond this enlarges 
into a wood-road, following at a short distance 
from its border a broad pond into which the 
river has been widened ; it finally disappears 
in a deep woods on a valley bottom into which 
the hills, turning a blunt angle, one by one 
emerge. 

Far above this river path, up so high that 
the eye overlooks an extended valley country 
and mountains beyond, is a group of resi- 
dences, into one of which you must come 
with me. 

The magazines and papers you see are much 
the same as those in the Stanton home in the 
city. The furniture looks as if it were made 
for use and comfort. The broad windows, 
thrown wide open, look down on the river, 
two blast furnaces, a score of tall mill chim- 
neys, and a romantic town straggling up the 
hills on the farther side of the stream. 

The Stantons, you will doubtless say, are 
changing people. That is true. 

But the time having come for Ben to begin 


54 Three Successful Lives. 

life in earnest, it seemed well to his father to 
settle him in a home during these first years 
out of college, instead of having him tossed 
about in friendless boarding-houses and ex- 
posed to all of the temptations of homeless 
men. 

So they have all come up to spend the 
summer and early autumn with him. Cold 
weather will call them back to the city with 
Rose, whose ambition in study is not second 
to Ben’s. They are within pleasant driving 
distance of “ Camp Tabor,” whither they pro- 
pose going during the camp-meetings, to 
spend their evenings. 

After much persuasion on the part of the 
Stantons, the Rutherfords and Winthrops con- 
sented also to spend their summer at “ The 
Heights.” They are all ensconced there. Ben- 
tie with a room so high that every morning 
she wakens to behold the sun rising over the 
distant blue of the hills. Rose is Bentie’s 
room-mate, and, although eight years younger, 
reads the same books, has many of the same 
aspirations, and in the midst of all her woman- 
ly ways is occasionally so childish that Bentie 
cannot refrain from laughing at her expense. 

One morning, shortly after their arrival, they 


Ben as a Manufacturer. 55 

were full of anticipations of an excursion they 
were to take through the mills. 

Among Rose’s dresses was a light cambric, 
which, inadvertently, had been made too long, 
but which she had persisted in keeping as it 
was, because of the important feelings to which 
it gave rise. 

Bentie, dressed in a dark brown linen with 
not even a ribbon to be soiled by the dust and 
cinders, watched Rose as she glanced along 
the hooks in the closet, and then laid her hand 
on the admired garment. An amused smile 
crept over her face, and Rose, turning suddenly, 
caught it. 

Now, Bentie, I think you are real mean. 
You have all done nothing but laugh over this 
dress, and I am going to wear it all summer, 
to tease you ; see if I don’t.” And the blue 
eyes snapped. 

Bentie looked with an abstracted gaze out 
of the window, as though it did not matter in 
the least to her, while Rose, taking the dress 
down, tipped the mirror at the right angle, 
in order to see the skirt fall till it almost 
touched the floor as she donned the garment. 
Nevertheless, she always felt better if she had 
Bentie’s approval. 


56 Three Successful Lives. 

Pausing suddenly and drawing a long breath : 

Isn’t it a misfortune, Bentie, that I am so 
tall?” 

“ Why, Trottie ? ” 

“ O, do call me Rose. One would think I 
could not walk.” And the pink swept in waves 
up her transparent cheeks and her eyes filled 
with tears. 

“Why, Rose?” 

Trot jerked her dress together, and, taking 
a second survey, said : “ Well, because it is 
positively necessary, if I am to look decent, 
that I should dress as if I were eighteen.” 

Bentie looked at the small, childish face 
crowning all this height, and smiled again, 
quite to Rose’s vexation, who wanted Bentie 
to say that no one would take her to be less 
than eighteen. 

But Bentie said, instead: 

“You always seem just like a little girl to 
me, and your face. Rose, is so childish, that 
any one can see you are nothing but a little 
girl.” 

“ Bentie ! ” and, with an end of her tie in 
each hand. Trot turned from the window; “ it 
is very evident that you have a spite against 
this dress. Now you can’t get me to take it 


Ben as a Manufacturer. 57 

ofif.” And with many needless spasms, Rose 
finished her toilet. 

She walked into the breakfast room with so 
much majesty and “ height,*’ as Ben said, 
whenever the dress made its appearance, that 
her father knew a storm was brewing. 

Well, daughter, you must eat a hearty 
breakfast this morning. Will you have some 
steak ? ” And Mr. Stanton passed her a gener- 
ous plate of steak and potato. 

“About a quarter of that, please, papa.” 
And Trot sat bolt upright. 

“ Why, little girl, are you ill ? ” 

Now this was too much. 

“ Papa, one would think it a cardinal sin 
for me to grow up, the way you all talk. I’m 
sure I can’t help the way God made rne.” 

“ Father, don’t you see th^t Trottie has 
donned her tall cambric, and is Miss Stanton 
this morning?” Ben’s eyes twinkled across 
the table to Bentie, 

Trot gave Ben what she designated a look, 
and then hastily took a sip of coffee. 

“ Let Rose rest,” said Aunt Winifred. “ I 
think it is the hardest thing in the world for a 
child tQ grow yp,” 

This only ni^ide matters worse with Rose. 


58 Three Successful Lives. 

Even Aunt Winifred spoke as if she were at 
present an insignificant individual. 

“ I will not say any thing about the length 
of the dress, but I must say that it is not 
suitable for the mills, and that those blue rib- 
bons are altogether out of place,’' remarked 
Mrs. Stanton, but in very gentle tones. 

Trot was not to be advised or persuaded, 
for she felt that all that was henceforth needed 
to convince every one of her experience and 
maturity, was to fight it out on her own line. 

So the excursionists started, the youngest 
in not a very enviable frame of mind. 

Ben and Bentie temporarily forgot the cam- 
bric dress in their deep interest in iron and its 
manufacture. 

Ben conducted them first to the blast fur- 
naces, where his apprenticeship was to begin 
the next week, and thence to the rolling-mills, 
where even Rose forgot herself and her childish 
longings in the vast labyrinths of roofs above 
their heads, the huge revolving wheels, the 
stalwart rushing to and fro with broad 

bands of red-hot iron, and the fierce crush of 
the squeezers as they seized the glittering 
balls of quivering rnetal and freed them from 
their drpss,. 


Ben as a Manufacturer. 59 

The two stood at a short distance from a 
pile of iron that was cooling before transpor- 
tation to the nail factories. Their attention 
was absorbed by the work of two men who 
were passing a sheet of the hot metal over and 
under a wheel. 

The day was a warm one, and, although the 
large fountain in the center of the inclosure 
was playing, and there were troughs of water 
at frequent intervals, the heat was insufferably 
oppressive. 

With her eyes fixed on what so interested 
her. Rose kept stepping back from the hot 
iron in her neighborhood, back, and still back, 
until she stood in a draft where her garments 
fluttered about her airy and lithe form. 

Suddenly, with a look of horror on his face, a 
man started toward her, and Ben turned to 
see the fatal cambric blowing toward a massive 
wheel about to revolve in a deep socket into 
which the water dashed with a hollow murmur. 

The next moment the dress touched the 
wheel, and Rose, with a confused, bewildered 
look, was drawn toward the black monster. 
Ben seized her, but the dress was only too 
fast, and both were slowly carried onward as. 
the wheel gave yet another move. With one 


6o Three Successful Lives. 

awful wrench backward, his arm about his sis- 
ter, he fell and she was alone. But the dress 
had begun to tear, and the man, w^ho was a 
giant in form and strength, coming up planted 
himself against a post and, hooking his arm 
around the terrified girl, he held her strained 
against his side as the wheel with her dress 
ascended. 

She was saved, but the skirt of the beloved 
cambric was gone, and, like a mockery of its 
owner’s ambition, clung limp and humiliated 
to the wheel as it plunged into the black abyss 
and began to revolve with awful rapidity. 

Rose was motionless for a minute ; then, a 
revulsion of feeling occurring, she sat down on 
a sooty bench and wept convulsively. She 
looked like a little black coal-picker with the 
dust all over the pretty waist, her small hands 
begrimed, and her face covered with white and 
black channels. 

Ben tie, now that danger was past, was af- 
fected in quite a different way, and, despite 
her efforts to the contrary, laughed peal after 
peal as she endeavored to wipe Rose’s counte- 
nance clean with her handkerchief. Ben’s ten- 
derness all came out in this extremity, and, 
though his sister looked absurd^ with not 


Ben as a Manufacturer. 6i 

enough of her dress left to make an apron, he 
never even smiled, and overwhelmed her with 
kind words and offers of assistance. 

There was a deal of giggling among the 
small mill-boys as the crestfallen child started 
on her homeward walk. She was so subdued 
that she quite forgave Bentie for laughing, 
and when they reached the house sprang, 
with a long cry, into her mother’s arms, ex- 
claiming : 

“ O mamma, I have been so naughty. I will 
never wear my cambric again — that is, till it is 
shortened.” 

At this speech Ben was obliged to laugh and 
Rose to smile as she realized how very short 
the unfortunate garment really was. 

I mean I will never wear any more long 
dresses, not as long as I live.” To this, 
through her tears and her smiles, as she com- 
prehended the danger to which her precious 
daughter had been exposed, Mrs. Stanton 
soothingly replied : 

“We understand it all. Just come up to I 
mother’s room.” 

What a blessed haven mother’s room has 
proved to all of us ! If we have concealed a 
naughty secret until it has burned into our con- 


62 


Three Successful Lives. 


science, how afraid of that room we have 
been, lest, once within its precincts, we 
should feel constrained to confess. If we have 
been tossed and buffeted till we felt as though 
there were no friends or mercy for us in the 
whole world, how the sunshine of love and 
tenderness has come creeping over us in moth- 
er’s room. If we have felt weak and helpless 
and longed for strength to meet the burdens 
pressing heavily upon us, how like the sacred 
cross to Christian was the door of mother’s 
room to us. There the burden always drops ; 
the soul mounts ; those four walls, that warm 
bosom, those pitying tears, and that sweet 
kiss, make us forget even that, when we go out 
once more, there will be battles just as stern 
to fight, there will be places just as friendless, 
there will be wants just as unappeasable, there 
will be every-where the immortal longings of 
life. But all may come so long as the sanct- 
uary, which is mother herself, remains in moth- 
er’s room. 

Trot came down stairs all pink and white and 
sweet. Her white dress, with its short skirt 
showing the finely formed feet, was prettier 
than the womanly dress of a few hours before. 

Her father caught a glimpse of her from the 


Ben as a Manufacturer. 63 

sitting-room, and, with as much boyishness as 
Ben now and then manifested, sprang through 
the open door, and, drawing her to him, kissed 
her tenderly. 

“ Where have you been all this time ? ” 

“ O, in mother’s room.” 

Mr. Stanton nodded his head approvingly, 
and, taking his hat and Rose’s from the hall 
table, gave her this mute invitation for a 
walk. 

Bentie and Ben, meanwhile, had wandered 
from the house, down the steep side of the hill 
to a cool spring in a deep hollow underneath 
three lofty hemlocks. 

With chestnut leaves cups were soon 
formed. While they sat beside the spring, 
occasionally bending over to dip a swallow of 
the clear water, and looking about as pictur- 
esque as they well could, the conversation 
turned upon the event of the morning. 

“ It seems a great pity to me, Bentie, that 
with all of Rose’s admirable characteristics, 
she should be so conceited. It requires a 
continual snubbing process to keep her any 
where within bounds.” 

** Perhaps, Ben, she is snubbed too much, 
and Bentie peered down into the spring. 


64 Three Successful Lives. 

Ben looked thoughtful and asked, “What 
other means would you employ, then ? ” 

“ It seems to me, Ben, that what we call 
conceit argues one of two things : either that 
a person has decided ability, or that he hasn’t 
any. Now, the first case is true as regards 
Rose. She cannot help knowing that in many 
things she is ahead of girls of her age. Know- 
ing it, it is the most natural error in the world 
for her to commit, to try to make every one 
of her circumstances in harmony with what 
she considers her superiority. We have all, I 
think, in one way or another, treated Rose as if 
she were a deluded simpleton and a childish 
woman ; that is, all except your mother. I was 
thinking over the cambric dress most of the 
time while I was watching them make iron, 
and was troubled because my manner had 
been so teasing in the morning.” 

Ben dipped and threw back the water sev- 
eral times and then, suddenly looking up, said : 

“ Bentie ! ” 

She raised her eyes to see a puzzled yet 
decided expression on his face as he con- 
tinued : 

“ What kind of a figure is Rose going to 
make in society?” 


i 


Ben as a Manufacturer. 65 

No figure at all, as regards general popu- 
larity.” 

“ But don’t you think it better for a girl to 
be popular? ” 

“ Y-e-e-s.” 

“Well, then?” 

“ Ben, the more precious any thing is, the 
less there is of it, and the fewer there are, con- 
sequently, to appreciate it. My observation 
leads me to believe that, as a general thing, a 
person who is extremely popular doesn’t 
amount to a great deal. Of course there are 
exceptions. Now, Rose is no common girl. 
To most people she will often be incompre- 
hensible. In general society she will frequent- 
ly be misunderstood. But, Ben, there are 
generally enough people of one kind to make 
a pleasant society, and somehow they will 
manage to get together. Rose will have a 
few brilliant, intellectual friends when she be- 
comes more mature, and they will satisfy.” 

“ Men don’t like such women,” replied Ben. 

“ Not the majority, perhaps. But there are 
as many men to like them as there are such 
women; that is my theory, at least,” added 
Bentie, laughing. “ If the likes and dislikes 
of the multitude as regards them make no 


66 


Three Successful Lives. 


difference to such women, what does it sig- 
nify?” 

Ben smiled in a nonplussed sort of a way, 
and then said : 

“ I can’t help it, I like these domestic, fem- 
inine, unpretending girls, and I wish that my 
sister was one of them.” 

Ben, Rose is just as feminine and just as 
domestic, and ten times more so, than that 
small Grace Doolittle, whom you admire so 
much. Now if I were a man” — and Bentie 
looked with profound wisdom up into the 
hemlock — “ I should rather enjoy marrying a 
woman whom most other men let alone. Her 
love for me would be all the stronger ; and 
then, too, I would feel complimented in the 
thought that I could appreciate what the 
multitude could not.” 

“ There is no use in having a diamond if 
every one thinks it a pebble. I like girls who 
don’t ruff up with every-day wear. Now you — ” 

There was a crackling of twigs on the hill 
above their heads, a laugh, and the fall of a 
pine cone. 

The two looked up, Ben to regard Rose as a 
small white fate, determined to interrupt every 
interesting conversation in which he engaged. 


Ben as a Manufacturer. 67 

Meanwhile his destiny requires us to give 
you a picture of Ben at actual work as an ap- 
prentice, and to compress into the remainder 
of this chapter the history of his success as 
a day-laborer and one of the managers and 
share-holders, at the age of twenty-three, in a 
large manufacturing company. 

Bentie and Rose, after the first week of their 
sojourn at “ The Heights,” were compelled to 
seek their own amusement throughout the 
day. Ben was their escort, though, on many a 
pleasant ride and ramble and sail during the 
long summer evenings. 

The Monday morning when, at the sound 
of the mill bell calling all hands to work, Ben 
stood on the hot floor at the summit of a blast- 
furnace, was a novel one to him. 

It went somewhat against the grain to re- 
ceive orders with as good a grace as if he 
were giving them ; to toil from seven till 
twelve and from one till six under the hot 
sun; to eat his dinner out of a pail, and see his 
white hands grow red and feel them blister. 
But while doing all this he stood higher in 
his own estimation than he had ever done 
before. 

“ One of these days, when I order, my men 
5 


68 


Three Successful Lives. 


will know that what I command I have done 
myself,” was his daily thought. “ They will 
see that I am a trained soldier in the manu- 
facturing army.” 

He remained at the blast furnace until he 
had learned all of the details of his business 
there. He came out in the winter bronzed, 
with large hands and sinewy muscles and 
shoulders broader than ever. Trot shed a few 
tears on seeing him at the holiday vacation, 
“ because he did not look nice.” Bentie, how- 
ever, reiterated so often her expressions of 
admiration, that Ben teased Rose by telling 
her that she had false notions of the beautiful. 

I should like to have'you follow him in de- 
tail for another six months, while he serves in 
the rolling-mills. I wish you could have seen 
him at length toss with great dexterity the 
heavy bands of iron, and wait upon an old 
puddler until his own eyes could discover with 
considerable accuracy the state of the molten 
metal in the huge furnace. I wish you could 
have witnessed the honest delight he mani- 
fested in the praise he received for his general 
aptitude. 

Do you think he lost his own self-respect 
or that of others ? Not a bit of it. There 


Ben as a Manufacturer. 69 

was not a laborer in the mills who did not, in 
meeting him on the streets, bow to him with a 
good-natured admiration that was truly in- 
spiring. There was not one of his masters 
who did not warmly say that a college educa- 
tion, college honors, wealth, and culture, had 
somehow helped Ben in this the humblest 
and yet the greatest of all his experiences. 
There was not one member of the company 
who did not feel that when he took his fa- 
ther s share they would be proud to acknowl- 
edge him. 

Thus the first fourteen months rolled away, 
and with them the most arduous season of his 
apprenticeship. Then follow'ed a few months 
in the keg-factory, where he learned to pack 
nails for transportation ; then several months 
in the nail-factory ; and then, at last, he laid 
aside his mill habiliments, and, donning a suit 
made in accordance with Rose’s likings, he 
entered the assayer’s office, where he felt 
thoroughly in his element. 

He studied with eagerness the various au- 
thors on metallurgy, and tested by practical 
experience each point learned. Every day, as 
he opened the door of the snug office, kept so 
clean that one would hardly have supposed, 


70 Three Successful Lives. 

when inside, that it was located in the midst 
of dusty mills, he looked around with serene 
eyes, planning here an easy-chair, and there a 
bird, and by the window a stand of flowers, 
and thought how complete the room would 
be with Bentie there as a student of assaying, 
and finally as the assayer of the mills. 

“ She is a girl with all of Rose’s smartness 
and none of her conceit. Now I am certain 
that she could come here day in and day out, 
and meet with nothing but unobtrusive re- 
spect, because it would be all she would seem 
to expect.” 

When Ben talked the matter of Bentie’s 
work over with his father, the latter sometimes 
smiled a little incredulously, and finally an- 
swered : “I think it is very important that 
girls as well as boys should learn some pro- 
fession. They have it to fall back upon in 
case of need. But I do think this is a strange 
calling for such a quiet little girl as our Ben- 
tie. She ought to teach school, if she feels 
like doing something, after leaving college.” 

Ben shrugged his shoulders, and replied: 

Bentie has always said that she would never 
like to teach, and she has always said that she 
would like to be an assayer. You advised me 


Ben as a Manufacturer. 71 

to become an iron manufacturer, because the 
calling I would then follow would be in ac- 
cordance with my tastes. I think the same 
rule ought to apply to Bentie.” 

“ I haven’t any decided objections. I am 
amused.” 

‘ Her Aunt Winifred wants her to try it. 
She says that she will come out here and 
board with Bentie while the latter is learning. 
Her office need not always be right where this 
one is, either.” 

“ No, I suppose not. If Bentie really wants 
to try, I shall place no obstacles in her way. 
I will take back what I said about teaching, 
too. It does seem as though there ought to 
be some other intellectual avenue open to a 
capable, intelligent girl. I do not know but 
that the best life-work Bentie can do while 
she is waiting to get married is to set an ex- 
ample of earnest, working independence to 
her young friends. Girls are too afraid of the 
judgment of the multitude, and do not suffi- 
ciently prize the warm praise of the most liberal 
Christian men and women.” 

Ben whistled more than ever around the of- 
fice after this speech by his father. He watched 
the buds burst their amber folds, the river 


72 Three Successful Lives. 

swell to majestic dimensions, the spring flow- 
ers peep one by one above the mosses and the 
springing grass, and the glad, sweet, radiant 
light of April kiss every thing, even the old 
mills, with a beautifying touch. 

April went. May trailed her dewy robes 
across the earth, and June, blushing, joyful, 
and queenly, like some heavenly visitor, glori- 
fied all nature, and ushered in a gladsome day 
on which Bentie was to receive her graduation 
laurels, and step forth into the world a happy, 
cultured, thoughtful, Christian woman. 


Charley Grows Ambitious. 73 


IV. 


CHARLEY GROWS AMBITIOUS. 


meanwhile, with Charley has not 
been idle. His experience has been a 
varied one. He sowed to the wind and 
he has reaped the whirlwind. But, unlike 
others who have done the same thing, he has 
gathered his unfortunate harvest so early that 
he feels there is time to sow once more and 
hope for a different crop. 

Charley is fourteen now. He still has a 
fondness for elaborate neckties, still has a chain 
of Milton gold among his valuables, still wears 
an immense seal ring, for which he spent a 
month’s earnings, and still dislikes books. 
But he is thoroughly dissatisfied with himself. 
He knows he is lazy. He knows he has disap- 
pointed his mother. He sees how far ahead 
of him in mental attainments Ben and Bentie 
and Rose are. He does not regard a notion- 
store in the light in which jie once did. He 
feels ashamed of the leaves of absence he has 


74 Three Successful Lives. 

stolen from the store in order to attend the 
“ Opera Bouffe," to see the “ Black Crook/' to 
hang about all of those most pernicious places 
for boys or men. 

Behind the counter is a stock of small, yellow- 
covered novels, for which he has expended 
countless dimes. Some of the titles read as 
follows : “ Jack, the Rover ; ” “ The Wreckers 
of Hurricane Bay ; ” “ The Angel of the 
Prairie;" “The Successes of a Wild Young 
Man ; " “ The Broken Heart of Mazie Tripple." 
These and others like them are the mental 
food on which he has fed for three years. He 
knows that these vile things he has seen, these 
unnatural books he has read, have given him 
tastes in which none of the friends he most 
respects can sympathize, and have so affected 
his mind that, when he takes up a history of 
Queen Elizabeth or of any other great woman, 
to read, he thinks of Mazie Tripple ; when he 
would admire Abraham Lincoln, the character 
of “ Jack the Rover" is the only one he dis- 
tinctly sees. 

It is an awful state of mind that, when one 
sees he is all wrong, and yet seems utterly 
powerless to set himself right. 

Occasionally, of late, after returning from the 


Charley Grows Ambitious. 75 

store, his mind more or less engrossed with the 
new aspect of things, Charley has looked up 
from his reading with an abstracted glance for 
one so young, and has found his mother’s 
eyes fixed questioningly and sadly upon him. 

Charley is a handsome, attractive boy. His 
black eyes, so tender and yet so brilliant, his 
regular features, his robust form, are all that 
could be desired. There is, however, a lan- 
guid look about him, which betrays a trouble 
he will always have to struggle against, a nat- 
ural propensity to extreme idleness. 

One evening, when Ben and Rose kept flit- 
ting back and forth before his mind’s eye at a 
most aggravating rate, he looked up to his 
mother, and said : 

“ Mother, I guess your boy is a failure. I 
am sick of myself and sick of every one but 
you.” 

Charley, to her surprise, became so much of 
a little boy again, that he threw himself down 
on the floor beside her and put his head into 
her lap. 

Too full of tears and new hopes to speak, 
she softly stroked the glossy black curls. 

He knew that she was crying. Pretty soon 
his own tears began to fall in great, hot beads. 


76 Three Successful Lives. 

and he shook convulsively. Then, of his own 
accord, he confessed about the novels, the low 
theaters, his dissatisfaction with his business, 
and his feeling of ignorance. 

She did not scold or tell him that he had 
been a very wicked and disobedient child, or 
once speak of her three years of disappoint- 
ment and sorrow. But she did say : 

“ Charley, my dear child, you are naturally 
indolent and obstinate. Mother knows that 
your life must always be a failure unless you 
can for a few years trust yourself completely to 
her judgment, and let her help you to habits 
of industry ; and then ” — Charley felt the lov- 
ing tears fall upon his forehead — “ there is for 
you a wiser, better Friend than your mother, 
who has also been waiting for you to return to 
him, Jesus Christ. We have both been listen- 
ing for a great many weary months, Charley 
dearest, to hear a word of prayer from your 
lips. Do you think it is well to delay any 
longer? ” 

“ Pray for me now, mother. 

They knelt down. After the mother prayed 
the son did. He offered himself anew to 
Christ. He prayed for forgiveness. He prayed 
for strength. And then when he arose he 


Charley Grows Ambitious. 77 

asked his mother’s forgiveness. After that 
they had such a loving and confidential talk as 
they had not enjoyed since leaving the farm. 

“ Mother, I should like to resign my posi- 
tion in the notion-store, if you think it 
best.” 

“ It is what I have been hoping for a long 
time you would want to do. But what will 
you engage in then ? ” 

“ You are to decide, mother. I should like, 
to please you, to go to school. I think I 
should have perseverance enough to study 
now.” 

“I feel very anxious to have you study, 
Charley, but it is for your own good. You 
can’t get along when you become a man un- 
less you learn to study in some way. There 
is not a successful man in this city who has 
not, to a considerable extent, either educated 
himself or attended school until he possessed 
the rudiments of a sound English education. 
There is too much competition in this demo- 
cratic country of ours for a man to win power, 
unless he has more than ordinary ability or 
ordinary culture. But study faithfully a year, 
for my sake, and then I feel quite sure you 
will study for your own.” 


78 Three Successful Lives. 

Mother, I should like to go back to the 
farm for a few days. It seems to me that if I 
were with the grass and the flowers and the 
birds for a while I could get a better start.” 

So they returned for a month. 

Charley arose the first morning after their 
arrival and drank in the fresh May air, with 
all that exhilaration one feels on return to 
his native place after long absence. After 
breakfast he went out to wander over the 
farm and ponder on his new prospects. He 
slowly walked across the grass-plot at the rear 
of the house, then down the path toward the 
meadow, keenly enjoying the fresh new things 
just peeping above the ground. Even the 
onions looked wholesome and cheering. The 
lettuce heads were crisp and curly. The sun- 
shine glistened the sweetest smiles to the 
flowers growing side by side with the vegeta- 
bles, and laid a silver crown on the brow of the 
hill toward which his steps were directed. He 
came to a little brook whose bridge of rough 
logs, sawn in two and laid loosely together, 
were covered along the edges with bits of 
moss — a bridge evidently that had not often 
been crossed of late years. It was set in a 
little dimple of land — between two knolls that 



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Charley on the Hill-top, 








Charley Grows Ambitious. 8i 

swept up the side of the hill toward the sum- 
mit where they became one and overlooked a 
low plateau on which the house was situ- 
ated. 

Charley got down on his knees on the bridge 
and leaned over the water, watching it ripple 
past the little stones, or become disturbed by 
the darting of pollywigs or fishes. He threw 
off his hat and bathed his temples in the cool, 
fresh water. It felt pleasant. He slowly 
climbed the hill, patting and pressing down 
with his feet the velvety, new grass, and think- 
ing how much softer and more beautiful it 
was than the handsomest carpet he had ever 
trodden. The very dandelions seemed to nod 
their heads as though they had been planted 
in the best place in the whole world. 

When he reached the brow of the hill and 
looked out over the distant Sound, at the quiet 
farm-houses nestling in among the hills, at the 
patient cows grazing near the spot where he 
stood, and above, at the fleecy white clouds 
sailing off toward the ocean, he experienced a 
great rest. He sat down and leaned his head 
against a hemlock that stood like a sentinel on 
the hill, and, closing his eyes, basked in the 
warm and penetrating light. 


82 


Three Successful Lives. 


He could not help comparing the city streets, 
the widest of which seemed contracted, with 
the winding lanes, the broad, green fields, and 
the illimitable ocean. 

Somehow he felt at home. He did not 
feel altogether ignorant. He began estimat- 
ing the probable harvest from this field and 
that, the value of the cattle browsing almost 
at his feet, and the amount of yearly profit 
to be -gained from just such a farm as his 
mother’s. 

He had long ago lost his desire to keep a 
hotel. It seemed to him as though he neyer 
could enter a store again. He knew that he 
had not shrewdness sufficient to be a lawyer, 
and he did not believe he would ever have 
goodness enough to be a minister. ‘‘ There 
isn’t much else left but farming,” and Charley, 
stretching himself out on the grass, heaved a 
great sigh. O dear, I wish I were smarter! ” 
and then, his natural obstinacy seizing him, 
he said : 

“ Farming is just as good as any thing else. 
You don’t have any bosses. You are not 
cramped within four walls every day. If you 
are not worth a cent, you can own a horse 
and go all over. Geed eup ! ” he cried with 


Charley Grows Ambitious. 83 

all the twang of a broad Yankee dialect, and 
he snapped his fingers to an imaginary horse. 
“You always have plenty to eat,” he contin- 
ued contemplatively. “ And then, how many 
kinds of business you can have all at the same 
time on a farm. Mother is a natural-born 
florist. I could be a horticulturist and ” — • 
catching a flash of the ocean in his eyes — “ a 
clam-merchant. I warrant the iron-manufac- 
turer and the chemist and the doctor would 
enjoy a visit to my farm.” 

Charley sat up and looked around. 

“ I do wonder if mother would be very much 
disappointed if I should turn out, after all, 
nothing but a farmer.” 

. He rose, stretched himself again, looked a 
little sleepily out of his great black eyes, and 
started down the hill, full of thoughts of his 
new business. 

When evening came and they were seated 
on the porch, the sweet and odorous spring 
breeze softly fanning their temples, Charley 
said, with quite a doleful pitch to his voice : 
“ What profession have you chosen for me, 
mother? ” 

“ I have not chosen any.” 

“ Well, what do you wish me to be ? ” 


84 Three Successful Lives. 

“ I want you to be something. I do not 
care what it is, if you will only work at it with 
your might and main.” 

“ I suppose you would be disappointed, 
though, if I were a farmer?” with a melan- 
choly cadence in his voice. 

“ Why, Charley, your father was a farmer.” 
Yes, but he was a minister first.” 

The boy looked as though he felt such a 
combination for himself an awful impossi- 
bility. 

“ He was not so good a farmer as he would 
have been had he taken up the business ear- 
lier in life. I should be sorry to see you at- 
tempt, when a man, two distinct occupations.” 
Why did father do so ? ” 

He would never have left the ministry if 
his health had not failed. But, Charley, I 
certainly shall not be satisfied with you as a 
farmer unless you take all the preliminary 
steps that Ben is taking, before entering upon 
his life-work. You cannot be too well pre- 
pared.” 

‘ Go through college ! ” and Charley looked 
up in dismay. 

“ Through the grammar school and high 
school, and then through college.” 


Charley Grows Ambitious. 85 

“ Why, see how old I will be. I am four- 
teen now ! ” 

“Twenty-four or five, probably,” said his 
mother quietly. 

“ Wouldn’t I be too old to learn my busi- 
ness then ? ” 

“ O, you know something of it now. Besides, 
there are the long summer vacations. You 
could not have a better time to study farming.” 

“ I shall want to rest then,” said Charley 
dolefully. 

“ Change is rest. After studying, as I ex- 
pect you will ” — and she looked at him with 
such fondness that her gaze went right to his 
heart — “ it will do you good to exercise your 
muscles.” 

“ I have not fully decided to be a farmer, 
you must remember, mother.” 

“ I hope not. One lesson you have to learn 
is that of making decisions deliberately. I 
shall be perfectly satisfied though, Charley, if, 
after a thorough discipline at school and col- 
lege, my boy does settle down on the dear old 
homestead, to beautify it and to exemplify the 
truth that science, rightly practiced, is fully as 
conducive to riches in the countr}^ as in the 
city.” 

6 


86 


Three Successful Lives. 


“ I really should like to be a farmer. But 
what a tremendous sight of work there is be- 
fore me.” 

He drew a very long sigh and said : I 
guess it is time to go to bed.” 

Here we shall have to leave him, as he is 
not yet a man, only a few years older, in fact, 
than the events in his history I have been re- 
cording. But during these years he has been 
a faithful though not a brilliant student, and 
his mother has strong hopes that finally, in 
his case, the fable of the tortoise and the hare 
will be exemplified. She often encourages him 
by saying : “ The race is not always to the 
swift.” 

So long as a mother hopes and loves, God 
prospers. 


Life-problems Solved. 


87 


V. 


bentie solves some life-problems. 

(jj^ENTIE had been at college five years. 
Two more were to roll around before 
she would leave the place whose beauty 
had become doubly beautiful through asso- 
ciation. 

In her college home she had been confronted 
with life-problems as difficult and quite as in- 
tricate as any she would ever have to solve. 
She was a thinking girl. The subtlety of 
motive, the result of action, its reflex influ- 
ence, her individual responsibility, were daily 
brought before her judgment. All of these 
cases in her own life, and in the lives of 
others on which she passed a mental verdict, 
developed her. 

Fortunately, O so fortunately for her, she 
was thrown with teachers and companions 
who had wills and minds of their own. She 
thus learned in deepest conviction that one 
of the sweetest and yet weightiest responsi- 
bilities God had given her, was to manage the 


88 Three Successful Lives. 

intricate engine of a trained will ; to direct its 
course along that way of life which leads the 
mind up steep grades to heights whence it 
can behold the majesty of eternity, and irre- 
sistibly impels the soul toward that point in 
its experience when it is thrilled with lofty, 
intellectual, and adoring love for its Creator. 

Bentie loved self, as does every body else. 

Man, love thyself, ’tis being’s first command,” 
floated before her mental vision a hundred 
times in her decisions against self. Living as 
she did, in daily contact with hundreds, it was 
a nice question to solve as to just how much 
was her due and how much was not. A 
member of a class of fifty, and an ambi- 
tious member, she queried many a night as 
to just how much of the class -glory she 
might honestly seek. A Christian, she won- 
dered just how far she could love the vain 
pomp and glory of the world. A girl, she 
pondered on the solemn issue confronting, 
nowadays, every highly educated woman, as 
to what, in this day of “ woman shall do this, 
and woman shall do that,” she might with 
propriety and dignity undertake. And like 
some tender melody sounding through one 
played loudly, she read the music ringing low 


Life-problems Solved. 


89 


and sweet from all those humbler destinies 
that had, through her unselfishness, become 
interwoven with her own. 

It was just after sunset. The early twilight 
glory was fading from the distant mountains, 
a faint, pink glow still permeated the atmos- 
phere, spreading over the level grounds in the 
immediate vicinity of the college, and softly 
falling upon a group of a half dozen young 
ladies clustered in a broad western window on 
the fourth floor. The room was a corner one ; 
its sole habitual occupant was Bentie. The 
evening in question was in the latter part of 
the May of her senior year. The group in her 
room was composed wholly of classmates. 
Such gatherings, sometimes found in one 
Senior room and sometimes in another, were of 
almost daily occurrence. If any thing of 
weight, as a question that involved incipient 
seditions, or indignation against the faculty 
was up, the girls liked to have Bentie in the 
number. If she thought things were a little 
out of order, it gave the others sanction to 
think them in a desperate condition. If she 
had nothing to object to what they resolved, 
they felt authorized to continue. 

Bentie had the reputation of being a con- 


go Three Successful Lives. 

servative. “ But/’ sdd Adah Middleton, who, 
having long ago dropped any thing approach- 
ing sentiment with regard to Bentie, neverthe- 
less took a class-pride in her standing and her 
honor, “ if you do once get Bentie started and 
off her guard, she goes to greater lengths than 
any of us would. She is the most courageous 
member of the class.” 

“ I thought all that long ago,” replied Mar- 
tha Livingstone. “ Bentie Winthrop, whether 
on her guard or off her guard, has always had 
the courage to do what she thought right. I 
don’t believe any of the rest of us have as pure 
a record in this respect.” 

“These extremely proper people are gener- 
ally hypocritical,” replied Adah. And then, 
her honesty not allowing her to let her friends 
make the logical application, she continued, 
“I have never caught Bentie Winthrop, 
though, in any thing hypocritical.” 

The subject of conversation came along at 
this juncture, and beguiled the group to her 
room with a promise of pickles — an induce- 
ment sufficient any day to lure girls to endless 
distances. 

The pickles having been disposed of, and 
unanimously voted deliciously sour, the ques- 


Life-problems Solved. gi 

tion for consideration proposed was : “ Wheth- 
er the Seniors had ‘ spunk ’ enough to override 
the faculty, either secretly or otherwise, in 
introducing a drama on the night of their exit 
from college society life, in which male and 
female characters should be personated.” The 
girls, with the exception of Martha and Ben- 
tie, all voted that it would be capital. They 
wanted it as much as the others, and could 
not refrain from laughing heartily as Adah 
graphically portrayed the arrangements which 
would be necessary for “ Midsummer Night’s 
Dream.” 

“ We can have the lion, too — a roaring lion. 
The effect will be perfectly irresistible.” 

“ O if it is to be something out of order, let 
us have a caricature of ‘ Romeo and Juliet,’ ’* 
exclaimed another. 

“ But male characters are not allowed,” ex- 
postulated Bentie, as soon as she could get a 
word in. 

“ That is just the point,” interrupted Adah. 
“ Here we have been all of these long years 
without being allowed to do this thing and 
that thing, until I feel tempted to break my 
neck because that wouldn’t be allowed.” 

^‘Well/’ said Martha, looking out of the 


92 


Three Successful Lives. 


window a little thoughtfully, “ we have suc- 
ceeded in living through this strait-jacket dis- 
cipline thus far, and I, for one, should like to 
part good friends with the faculty. I suspect 
when we get a few years older we will look 
upon pickles and mixed dramas somewhat dif- 
ferently. Let’s give the rebellion up and con- 
sider what we must do as Seniors to set an 
example to those presuming Juniors aching 
to see us go.” 

But Adah and all of the others, except Ben- 
tie and Martha, insisted on “ Midsummer 
Night’s Dream,” and there, in her room ! — not 
very lady-like, she could not help thinking — 
the arrangements were made, and the next 
Friday night, owing to their being Seniors, 
the party carried the matter into society and 
imposed secrecy. 

Did Bentie tell ? 

No. She never reported an outbreak or ir- 
regularity of any kind. If this seems unfair 
to the faculty I will defend her by saying that 
she truly feared the influence on herself ; she 
feared becoming a newsmonger. The habit 
of gossiping and tattling grows very easily, 
and is a tyrant whose yoke one cannot readily 
shake off. 


Life-problems Solved. 93 

The evening for the entertainment came in 
due time. 

The king sat on his throne. Titania was 
there arrayed in all of her diminutive glory. 
The lion stalked forth with a mighty roar, car- 
rying his artificial tail, it is true, rather limp, 
but, nevertheless, bringing the house down 
with claps and laughter. While he stood on 
the small stage, in lion-like majesty, a curtain 
was pushed aside, and, from some invisible 
back-door, the president of the college ap- 
peared upon the scene. And the court ad- 
journed. 

How did he find it out ? How does he ever 
find out ? It is a part of his business to make 
just such discoveries, and if you search the 
records of most schools you will find that he 
is the fifth act in about every secret drama 
ever played within his dominions. 

Adah told Bentie that she hoped the class 
would not be invited again to “350” to eat 
pickles. At this implied rebuke Bentie waxed 
a little indignant. 

Although the drama met with such an igno- 
minious fate, questions for future discussion 
were not wanting. One of great importance 
and of daily growing interest as April days 


94 Three Successful Lives. 

came and went was : “ What shall we wear on 
Commencement Day?” 

Bentie thought of Ben, and, remembering 
how resplendent he had shone in the expen- 
sive outfit in which he had stepped out into- 
life, set her heart upon a white satin. 

“ I have gone all these years as demure and 
plain, at watering-places and all, as could be,” 
she wrote to Aunt Winifred ; “ and now don’t 
you think I deserve the satin? Some of the 
girls say that they never expect to marry, and 
that they mean, therefore, to have their trous^ 
seaiis on Commencement Day. Don’t you 
think I would better make sure of one? Now 
coax papa for me for the satin.” 

While Aunt Winifred is going around for a 
day or two in a bewildered way, wondering if 
Bentie has become demoralized or crazy, she 
receives another letter, saying : 

“ Tell papa that he is on no account to buy 
me a satin. We have had a class meeting, 
and none of us are going to wear satin. We 
have decided to appear as we do in ordinary 
life and see whether we will be considered a 
brilliant class and all that sort of eulogy. And 
tell papa, and I mean you, too, that he isn’t 
to buy me a single new thing. I think I have 


Life-problems Solved. 95 

enough to begin life with as an educated 
woman. O, dear me ! this letter doesn’t 
sound elegant or any thing else but Benty- 
ish. I am afraid that I shall never be * grown 
up ’ when I write to you.” 

Bentie’s change of mind about the satin 
dress was induced, as she said in her letter, by 
a class meeting. 

Previous classes had appeared before parents 
and friends in all that bewildering cloud-land 
of muslin, lace, powdered hair, and sparkling 
jewelry, which is a poem though not a word be 
uttered. Should the class of ’69, do likewise ? 
Such an original set of young women ! Should 
they depart from Alma Mater with exactly as 
many ruffles as their predecessors ? With 
orations and essays that had precisely the 
same ring and a general effect that gave them 
the appearance of having been run in the 
same mold with those of a hundred other 
classes ? 

No! 

So the fifty members met to consider how 
they could be different, and, at the same time, 
cover themselves with glory. 

“ Will some one state the object of the meet- 
ing ? ” asked the president of the class. 


96 Three Successful Lives. 


Bentie arose. 

“ Miss President: The members of the class 
of ’69 have been under the same course of in- 
struction for four years, and many of us have 
been students in this college for a period of 
six years. We came here to have our minds 
educated beyond the average curriculum pre- 
scribed for young women. We came here, 
indeed, to acquire through a college course, 
not only a superior education, but also an un- 
usual amount of common sense. The ques- 
tion to be submitted to the class is a common- 
sense one, and is, that we as a class discard 
what are known as commencement-dresses, 
and also all of their accessories, and appear 
before the friends of the college in a neat 
house-costume.” 

‘‘ Do you put your statement as a motion, 
Miss Winthrop ? ” 

“ I do.” 

** The question before the class is,” repeated 
the president, “ that we discard commence- 
ment-dresses, with all their accessories, and 
graduate in simple house-costume. Is the 
motion seconded ? ” 

I second it,” responded Martha Living- 
stone. 


Life-problems Solved. 97 

Remarks are in order.” And the presi- 
dent looked over the class. 

Up rose a majestic girl — her brilliant color 
and black eyes heightened in effect by her 
plain but elegant dress. 

‘‘ Will the first speaker define what she 
means by house-costume ? ” 

“ I mean what we as individuals wear in the 
afternoon,” was the reply. 

“ I should like to ask the object of this in- 
novation ? ” 

Bentie looked around for some one else to 
speak, but the others were waiting for her, and 
so she arose again. 

“ Miss President : It is possible and alto- 
gether probable that in a class of fifty the 
pecuniary circumstances of the members vary 
greatly. It seems to me that we, as a class, 
professing to esteem the true culture of the 
woman of chief importance, may do a neces- 
sary work, if we break down one of the hin- 
derances to a high education by discouraging 
and discarding many of the expenses incident 
to a Commencement. I think elaborate dress 
a useless expense. There have been com- 
mencement-outfits purchased by members of 
this college which have cost several hundred 


98 Three Successful Lives. 

dollars. I think it is all wrong, and a libel on 
our standing as scholars and liberal women.” 

The first speaker on the opposite side re- 
sumed the floor. 

“ Miss President : We have lived harmo- 
niously together for four years, some of us ex- 
changing the calico of the morning for the 
calico of the afternoon ; others exchanging the 
morning garment for one of cashmere, silk, or 
other expensive material. Now, if we appear 
individually on Commencement Day in our 
afternoon dress, there will be not only irregu- 
larity in quality and style, but also in color, 
and the whole effect of our appearance as a 
class will be ruined. Those who wish inex- 
pensive dresses can have them, but I think we 
ought all to appear in white and wear gloves. 
Just as soon as we leave college we shall have 
to meet with and accept the inequalities due 
to a difference in wealth.” 

Bentie began to grow a little excited as she 
saw the impression that Maria Riverton’s re- 
marks made, and, with a little tremble in her 
voice, responded : 

“ I am sure that no one wants to advocate 
uniformity in every-day apparel. No one de- 
nies that economy and self-sacrifice will have 


Life-problems Solved. 99 

to be practiced by some when they are through 
college. But, Miss President, the fact is here : 
I know there are young women in this institu- 
tion who, possessing one or two good dresses, 
have expended all the money either they or 
their parents can well spare. These dresses 
are, moreover, suitable for any occasion. What 
I propose is that we do not as a class launch 
into the extravagance of purchasing an outfit 
that we may never wear again. There is a 
heavy enough tax as it is upon the class for 
incidental expenses.” 

Adah Middleton rose and said, with a mock 
assumption of gravity : 

“ I move, as an amendment to the first 
speaker’s motion, that we not only discard 
^ commencement-dresses,’ but the band, the 
flowers, and the supper we once considered 
essential for Class Day, the elegant invitations 
that we were to have issued for that occasion ; 
and also that we send in a petition to the fac- 
ulty that we be allowed to take our final de- 
parture from the college through the kitchen- 
department.” 

Bentie’s face flushed angrily. 

Another member rose, one who did not 
often “ speak in meeting.” She was a girl 


100 Three Successful Lives. 

with a grave, sweet countenance, and one 
whose wardrobe had been conspicuously plain. 
She stood there among the fifty with no other 
ornaments than the ruffles at throat and wrist, 
and a wealth of soft brown hair that shone like 
a halo in the light streaming through the win- 
dows from the setting sun. She was one of 
the honor-girls. 

“ Miss President: If the class will excuse an 
allusion to self, I should like to say a few 
words. Through money gained by two years 
of teaching, and other funds which I was 
obliged to borrow, I have been able to spend 
three years in college and to meet all incident- 
al expenses. I have not, however, been able 
to take a part in societies or in any of the so- 
cial relaxations so many have enjoyed in their 
rooms. I tell all this, something I have not 
mentioned before, to call attention to the 
views of one who does have to practice strict 
economy. I agree with the first two speakers 
that it is right we should expect to meet with 
a greater variety in costume out of school; 
and I can see no direct question of right and 
wrong as regards independence in dress in 
school. But this is the deciding point in my 
mind. This college was founded for the higher 


Life-problems Solved. ioi 

education of young women. All over the 
length and breath of our land are girls of su- 
perior endowments and attainments who wish 
to come here simply because of the complete- 
ness of the institution. Better opportunities 
are afforded here than in any other college for 
women. I am acquainted with girls who say 
that they could meet the actual school ex- 
penses, but that they have not the courage to 
stand the social pressure. Some may say that 
they ought to have the moral courage. Well, 
that is so. But men and women who bless the 
world when they begin to help people, take 
them as they are and not as they ought to be. 
As a class we are dreading the loss we shall feel 
in our respective homes, of a large circle of 
girls of superior mental culture. We look for- 
ward to the time when girls will be ashamed 
of a smattering, and a higher education will be 
general with our sex. It seems to me, there- 
fore, that it is our duty, as a class, to sacrifice 
any thing on a day exclusively ours, that will 
stand in the way of the intellectual advance- 
ment of girls. I ought, perhaps, to say, to con- 
vince you that my opinion is given regardless 
of personal expense, that my white dress is 
made, my gloves are purchased ; in short, that 
1 


102 Three Successful Lives. 

all my outfit necessary for Commencement is 
ready.” 

Bentie tried to raise a clap and was moder- 
ately successful. Cecilia, as she sat down, 
drew a long, suppressed breath of relief. 

Are there any further remarks ? ” asked the 
president. 

Up jumped a dumpy little creature with a 
rosy face and the merriest blue eyes, teeth 
that seemed to laugh in company with her 
mouth, and a nose that turned as naturally up- 
ward as did her bonnie sweet eyes. 

“ Miss President : I am afraid if I begin that 
I will, like the speakers before me, make an 
address.” At this there was a great ripple of 
laughter from the class. “ But, before I do say 
any thing wise, I mean any thing solemn — 
for what I am going to say ought to be, at 
least, next-door neighbor to wise — Cecelia 
Marston is a heroine.” 

The president tapped her mallet and, trying 
to suppress a smile, said : 

“ No personalities.” 

“ Then I’ll make my speech.” The round, 
aspiring nose gave a characteristic dimple. 
“ We are going to get upon that rostrum on 
Commencement Day, or rather some of you 


Life-problems Solved. 103 

are — the honor-girls have let me read their 
effusions, and I know what I am saying — and 
they are going to talk about the ‘ Civilization 
of the World,’ the ‘ Advance of Woman,’ the 
‘ Poetry of Common-sense,’ ‘ Life-problems,’ 
and ever so many other hifaluten — ” 

“ Oh ! ” resounded through the hall in a tone 
of horror. 

“ Excuse me. Miss President, I mean know- 
ing Now, I think they would better 

practice what they preach, and work out the 
right answer to the problem they are on at 
this very moment.” 

Patty took her seat with a bustle that made 
every one aware, herself included, of her silk 
dress. She drew a wry face and then, turning 
to Cecilia, whispered, “You wear an alpaca 
dress, and I will.” 

Still another speaker arose ; the “aristocrat ” 
of the class. 

“ Miss President : I confess to little interest 
in these wonderful civilizing topics. I do not 
believe that the mere fact of one class dressing 
after a fashion of its own will set a fashion for 
other classes or exert a moral influence worth 
any thing. But I do think it is a senseless 
way of managing matters, to have fifty young 


104 Three Successful Lives. 

ladies look like fifty peas out of the same pod 
one particular day of their lives. I favor a 
departure, because I wish to dress to suit my- 
self, and because I think I can arrange a neat 
home-dress that will be more stylish than a 
regular commencement-outfit. So I should 
like to see the original motion carried.” 

Bentie was on her feet again. 

“ I think we ought to make the matter one 
of principle.” 

“Perhaps every one does not see principle 
in the color of a dress.” 

“ The question is not on the color of a dress. 
It ought, at least, to be discussed in a business- 
like manner.” 

The “ aristocrat ” smiled wearily, and made 
no reply. 

Adah said, “ Some of the class see so little 
business in the question that they do not con- 
sider it worth their serious attention.” 

“ Order ! ” tapped the president. 

The “ oldest member” rose. 

“ Miss President: It has been suggested that 
we do away with all class-expenses. May I be 
allowed to say that I consider this suggestion 
senseless. In the first place, on Class Day and 
Commencement, we invite our friends, not to 


Life-problems Solved. 105 

look at us, but to hear us. As hostesses, more- 
over, would it not be in good taste for us to dress 
at least no more conspicuously than our guests, 
and to expend all of our thought on making the 
two days literary in their character? Our 
friends are not invited to a party or a ball, but 
to a literary entertainment. Any thing that 
will heighten the effect of class-day and com- 
mencement exercises will, therefore, be legiti- 
mate. The first question, then, to consider 
is : Are outfits for Commencement Day essen- 
tial?" 

There was applause. 

Bentie rose. 

“ Miss President : I withdraw my first mo- 
tion, and move that, as commencement-dresses 
are not essential, we discard them." 

I second the motion," came from several 
quarters. 

“ Any remarks?" said the president. 

But there were no remarks. The vote was 
taken, and Bentie’s second motion carried 
the day. “ Life-problems are very mixed 
in their character," was her last thought for 
that day. 

Meanwhile, the hours flew apace. Through 
May were the closing examinations. These 


io6 Three Successful Lives. 

and her graduating essay were among her 
special life-problems. 

Bentie did not enjoy the glory of being an 
honor-girl as much as she thought she would. 

Only ten out of the fifty were allowed to 
appear on Commencement Day. All the fifty 
had been in the college for from four to six 
years. All had toiled more or less faith- 
fully to reach the final goal and leave an hon- 
orable record. Fifty families and a host of 
friends for each graduate looked forward 
with fond hopes to that final day. Forty had 
been obliged to write home that they were 
not to rank in the first third of the class. Ben- 
tie, in the midst of her happy preparations, 
could not forget the night when the news came 
from faculty meeting as to the few who were 
chosen. She remembered the tearless but 
proud, sad eyes of one girl who had studied 
unremittingly, and whose every hope lay in 
her success as a scholar. She recalled the 
convulsive short-drawn sigh of an impulsive 
classmate who had studied, it is true, by fits 
and starts, but who stood well — and then her 
breaking down before them all and whisper- 
ing to Bentie, “ Papa will be so disappointed ! 
And then, knowing that one or two of the 


Life-problems Solved. 107 

honor-girls were glib of tongue, but not pro- 
found in scholarship, she could not help feeling 
that even so learned a body as a faculty failed 
sometimes in sounding the depths. 

So, instead of retiring on that eventful 
night in a maze of happy feeling, she was sub- 
dued ; and, while thanking God for all of his 
special providences unto her, she prayed to be 
kept humble and made wise to understand the 
truth throughout her life. Then, too, her am- 
bitions had not been altogether realized ! Ben 
had graduated valedictorian. For two years 
she had longed to do the same. And she had 
not even been mentioned for that honor. She 
confided her disappointment to her father, who 
wrote her: 

“ You have done well enough. I fear to see 
a young person succeed too easily, for the ma- 
jority of those who attain distinction early 
fail to do so later. My chief desire for you 
is, that you shall in the future, as you have 
done in the past, develop slowly but sym- 
metrically. Always take time, my darling, to 
be strong.” 

This greatly comforted Bentie. Perhaps 
her moderate success saved her from egotism 
and enlarged her charity. At all events, she 


io8 Three Successful Lives. 

was going to graduate without that uncomfort- 
able self-consciousness and amusing ignorance 
of life’s great ends that so many college boys 
and girls manifest. There was one fact of 
which she felt sure. She had so fitted herself 
for a teacher, that, should her father’s wealth 
take wing and fly away, she possessed in her- 
self the means of self-support. “ And now, 
if I have health and opportunity to carry out 
Ben’s plans and mine, I shall have two pro- 
fessions.” In accordance with this thought, 
when her “ Senior vacation ” came, quite to 
the surprise of many in the class who knew 
nothing of her hopes, she persisted in daily 
spending hours in the laboratory. When ex- 
postulated with, she replied : I love chem- 
istry.” 

“But your examinations are over, and I 
should think you would hate the sight of 
books for a while,” said Adah. 

“ Why, Adah, it is a real rest to me to see 
what is in all these bottles and drawers, and 
to study up those points on which I did not 
have time to dwell when I was going over 
them in class. I would rather work down 
here than go to my meals.” 

“ You are the queerest girl ! ” was the reply. 


Life-problems Solved. 109 

“ For my part, I intend to rest a few months 
on the fact that I have finished. Some dis- 
agreeable duty will turn up soon enough.’' 

‘‘ Adah,” and Bentie paused an instant — a 
retort in one hand and a bottle in the other — 
“ I feel so happy and peaceful nowadays, that 
I do not believe any thing or any body could 
be very disagreeable to me.” 

“ O ! ” and Adah elevated her eyebrows and 
replied, “ I could not be so placid and wouldn’t 
if I could. This whole place and every body 
in it seems so tiresome, now that I am through. 
I could not stay another day, if it were not 
for our Junior party and the class-fun.” 

Adah had been out of sorts with the col- 
lege for half a year. She had the uncomfort- 
able consciousness that a great many felt that 
there was not much of the woman about her, 
and that she had cultivated her intellect and 
indulged her selfishness at a dear cost to her- 
self and others. She really did feel as if it 
were time for her to go somewhere else. 

On the other hand, Bentie’s heart was full of 
that gentleness and love which come to almost 
all on the eve of a separation, if they can, by 
the looks and deeds and words of those around 
them, somewhat estimate the wealth of love 


no 


Three Successful Lives. 


they have aroused. The dear old college was 
like a mother, and every body was a great deal 
better than herself. She hoped that when she 
reached home her life would bless others in 
the same rich manner in which many lives 
had showered benedictions upon her pathway. 
She did hope that her father would grow 
gladder and gladder because he had sent his 
only girl through college. With these 
thoughts, notwithstanding Adah’s badinage, 
she worked on in the laboratory till the very 
last day. 


Bentie’s Graduation. 


in 


VI. 

bentie’s graduation 

f HERE is nothing like a bustle. Life 
seems then to grow apace. There is 
nothing like change. Years are counted 
by events. 

To Bentie, passing through the exciting and 
varied scenes of closing days, there was an ex- 
hilaration in the sweet June skies, a light in 
every eye, a hope in every step. Success was 
heralded from one end of the breezy corridors 
to the other, until she wondered whether the 
struggles and the headaches and the failures 
of her school-life were not all a dream, and she 
secure in a haven of everlasting prosperity. 

It is good that girls can have visions of 
earthly bliss, that boys can be monarchs in 
their youth, supreme rulers even when they 
are under the most stringent rulers. It is 
good that the heavens above us are glorious 
with Spanish castles and the earth below gold- 
crowned and pure as a daisy-field and with 


112 


Three Successful Lives. 


nothing but the flowers of hope and youth to 
make it so. It is good for us all, bless God ! 
that, whether hope be of the past in sweetest 
memories, or of the near future in glad antici- 
pations,* or for the invisible Heaven in purifi- 
fied and patient waiting, it never dies, never 
grows old, and yet is always circled with a 
halo of eternal youth. Hope belongs to us 
all, and yet is the sweet, glad, secret posses- 
sion of each soul. 

if I talk much longer in this vein you will 
say I am preaching a sermon. That is the 
farthest from my present intentions. Indeed, 
just now my mind is filled with a fair picture 
of these stately rooms all in a twitter with the 
gay voices and merry laughter of a bevy of 
girls engaged in decorating the pictures with 
graceful vines, the windows with hanging- 
baskets, and every imaginable nook with 
flowers. 

This shall be the most attractive Junior 
party ever given in the college,” exclaimed 
one girl, stepping at a distance from a lovely 
landscape to note its effect in a wreath of deli- 
cate smilax and rich English ivy. “ You would 
leave it so, wouldn’t you, Cassie?” 

“Yes, indeed! It is exquisite. Yes, I want 


Bentie’s Graduation. 113 

our entertainment of the Seniors to be in every 
respect the most elegant of any given here. I 
hope it will pass off without a single jar. The 
Seniors of this year are a very respectable 
class, too, notwithstanding the dignity of their 
class is shadowed by the dawning glory of 
ours.” 

“O let us cease underrating the Seniors, 
now that we are alone. To tell the truth, 
Cassie, if I thought that we would do as well 
in examinations, and could have as much clftss 
character, I would feel satisfied.” 

“ I suppose,” said Cassie, “ that those Seniors 
who were disappointed over the action of the 
class as regards commencement dresses will 
make a grand toilet for to-night.” 

“ I wonder what Bentie Winthrop will 
wear.” 

Something elegant, I dare say — that is, ele- 
gant in fit and style. But she wont appear 
with a fortune on her back, that I am sure 
of.” 

‘‘I do not believe,” said Franc, '‘that I 
would have the courage to dress plainly and 
without any display of jewelry for four long 
years, as she has done. They say, too, that 
she is immensely wealthy.” 


1 14 Three Successful Lives. 

Perhaps she doesn’t care for such things.” 

“Yes, she does. She did have a very ele- 
gant pink silk made for one of the entertain- 
ments. It was all trimmed with point lace, 
and was just lovely. And then at the very 
last minute she put on a simple organdie, be- 
cause, as she said, it did not seem right to 
dress so elaborately while at school.” 

“ What did she do with the silk ? ” exclaimed 
Cassie. “ If I had such a dress, I think I 
shbuld wear it.” 

“She put it away till vacation, when she ap- 
peared in it at a couple of parties and where 
it looked suitable.” 

“Well, I am glad that she isn’t one of the 
kind who would discard all richness and ele- 
gance in dress just because every body cannot 
wear silks and satins. I thought that was her 
doctrine.” 

“ O no. You have to be in the same parlor 
with Bentie Winthrop, though, to understand 
her. You would soon find out that one of her 
striking characteristics was a fine sense of 
the proprieties. Every thing in dress, in 
conversation, in manner, has its place with 
her. She seems to understand in a moment 
what she is to say, or do, or even wear, to 


Bentie’s Graduation. 115 

make every one around her comfortable and 
contented.” 

Not always,” replied Cassie. “ I know two 
or three in her class who dislike her ex- 
tremely.” 

“ I do, too. But they dislike her because 
she has been true to principle right straight 
through her career here. With all her quiet- 
ness she is no coward. I suppose you refer 
for one to Adah Middleton. Really, Cassie, 
1 shouldn’t feel highly complimented to have 
Adah Middleton for one of my admirers.” 

“ Some say that Adah is by far the smartest 
in her class. I can overlook a great deal if a 
person is smart. There is a kind of slowness, 
for instance, about Bentie, that I should think 
would sometimes exasperate a girl like Adah.” 

‘‘ Bentie is thorough. Adah is versatile ; 
she knows a thing to say it, but she isn’t 
much of a thinker. And even if she is, as 
you say, the smartest in her class, I think 
that is all the more reason why she should be 
the best in every other respect. The day is 
past, my dear, for brilliant people to be stum- 
bling-blocks in moral influence. You know 
there isn’t a girl who is acquainted with Adah 
Middleton but that likes her with a proviso. 


ii6 Three Successful Lives. 

If hers is the career of all smart girls, I, for 
one, would rather know a little less.” 

Cassie went humming away to a flower- 
stand and for a minute made no reply; then, 
turning to Franc, she said : Don’t you think 
that, generally, people who have a mania for 
brain culture without heart culture are those 
who are conscious of possessing little depth of 
moral purpose?” 

Franc’s face lighted as she replied: “Yes; 
and what does it matter, after all, if one is not 
brilliant ? We have an eternity to grow in ; 
so long as we have, why not develop even- 
ly? Brilliant people are usually one-sided. 
They do very well in books, but they are not 
the ones to live happily with nor those from 
whom we can learn the most. I like the men 
and women who by their lives suggest a 
general goodness and excellence. Bentie 
Winthrop will make such a woman.” 

Meanwhile there had been just as earnest 
talks among the Seniors about the Junior 
party. It had always been a custom in the 
institution for the Junior class to give the 
Senior class a party, at which there was, of 
course, a suspension of class-hostilities, and 
a general oneness of sentiment wonderful to 


Bentie’s Graduation. 


117 


behold. Each successive Junior class en- 
deavored to make its party a masterpiece, 
and each successive Senior class made a point 
of considering itself more handsomely enter- 
tained than was ever any predecessor. So 
the Seniors of Bentie’s time were through the 
day gathered here and there in groups, dis- 
cussing the party with as much earnestness 
and expectation as they had any they had 
ever attended at their homes. They even 
tried to peep into the suite of parlors being 
prepared for them, in order to express their 
commendation to the Juniors. 

But the latter would open to no Senior 
“ sesame,” and not until evening, when the 
gas was brilliantly lighted and the study-bell — 
most unwelcome sound — was rung for students 
of lower grades, were the rooms thrown open, 
and the Juniors, looking in their dignity of 
hostesses like experienced women with very 
youthful faces, were ready to receive the fac- 
ulty and their most honored guests. 

It is wonderful how necessity will develop 
resources. Many a girl had come to the col- 
lege with little previous social culture, but 
possessed of ready tact. A year or two had 
toned the roughnesses, had smoothed out the 
8 


ii8 Three Successful Lives. 

idiosyncrasies, had given a general knowledge 
of “ what to do,” that fitted her to be a 
molding influence in the narrow circle to 
which she was perhaps destined to return. 

Of the Junior class the president was a 
notable example of this kind. One would not 
have recognized the awkward girl of three years 
before in the one to whom Bentie stood pay- 
ing her addresses. While enjoying the ease 
with which Janet Fullerton asked those ques- 
tions and made those remarks, trivial indeed 
as regarded their mere purport, but necessary 
at a reception or large party as is a table of 
contents to a school-book, she thought of 
God’s goodness in making beautiful the des- 
ert places and opening one land where all 
could rise or sink to their level. While hear- 
ing every word, and seeing, with a woman’s 
quick eyes, the exact fall of the plain but 
graceful black silk, the droop of the lace at 
throat and sleeves, the delicacy of the flowers 
gleaming in Janet’s dark and glossy braids, 
she at the same time looked into memory’s 
gallery and beheld an ungainly girl, with stubby 
hair cut short and straight around her neck, a 
blushing, bashful face, hands twisting in and 
out of each other, a dress of good quality, but 


Bentie’s Graduation. 119 

misfitting, a strange mingling of colors, and, 
as the center of all this, a recitation marred by 
grammatical errors and a disagreeable provin- 
cial pronunciation. Y et from such a beginning 
had been eliminated the lady before her. 

“ I wish I might lay aside my duties as 
hostess,” said Janet, as Bentie turned toward 
the various members of the faculty, “ for a 
conversation with you. I will say just one 
word : when you are gone I shall lose one of 
my strongest inspirations for culture.” 

“ O Janet ! ” and Bentie flushed at this un- 
expected compliment. “ I feel, when talking 
to you, that you are in many things away be- 
yond me.” 

“The blessing of this college is,” was the 
reply, that we have every incentive to hu- 
mility, because here we see how much there 
is to learn.” 

“Yes,” replied Bentie warmly. “Life and 
years seem so beautiful since they have come 
to symbolize growth to me. But I am tres- 
passing. If I see you free I will come back.” 

Janet received her next guest with a glow 
in her eyes and a tenderness about her mouth 
that made her very beautiful. Soon the par- 
lors were full. The faculty, feeling that their 


120 


Three Successful Lives. 


relation as teachers to the students had about 
closed, were as jolly and entertaining a com- 
pany as is a body of ministers at a dinner 
table. The Juniors as a class were happier 
than they had ever been before, as one guest 
after another admired the beauty of their 
floral decorations, and they received and re- 
turned the numerous repartees on their dawn- 
ing honors. The collation, of course, was as 
artistically arranged as were the parlors. How 
luscious the fruits and ices looked on that 
warm June evening! and with what sheer en- 
joyment faculty and students mingled their 
laughter and wit with coffee and sandwiches, 
creams and confections ! 

Franc and Cassie at length found an oppor- 
tunity to resume their conversation of the 
afternoon. 

“ Well, Cassie, what do you think of Bentie 
Winthrop to-night ? ” 

“ Beautiful ! But who would ever have 
thought of producing an effective dress out of 
comparatively nothing, as she has done.’' 

I heard the president tell the lady-princi- 
pal that he thought Miss Winthrop the most 
exquisitely dressed person in the rooms, and 
that he did not know but that they would 


Bentie’s Graduation. 121 

have to establish a department for the study 
of dress as a fine art, and place Bentie at the 
head of it!” 

Cassie looked up with eyes as round as 
beads as she replied : “ Who would ever have 
thought him so observing as to notice a toilet 
in that way. But what do you suppose ? Ben- 
tie’s organdie is made over! It isn’t silk, for 
I felt of it when I was behind her, and yet it 
looks as well.” 

“ The coarsest kind of linen. I was in her 
room while she was dressing. Isn’t it an 
idea?” 

Bentie did look well. Out of mere fondness 
for planning and sewing, she had, after it was 
fitted, made her own dress and trimmed it 
after a design of her own. There was a grace- 
fulness about the draping, an exquisiteness in 
the arrangement of the delicate, white ruffles, 
shading here and there long sprays of a climb- 
ing, faintly tinted buff* rose, intermingled with 
forget-me-nots, that made the dress seem a 
part of her, and intensified the purity of her 
complexion and the finer outline of her coun- 
tenance. 

Maria Riverton and her clique were con- 
spicuous in diamonds, expensive laces, and all 


122 


Three Successful Lives. 


the varied articles of a fashionable woman’s 
wardrobe. 

“ They look after all so much like the fash- 
ion-plates that there is nothing novel about 
their costume,” said Franc. 

“ O, I don’t know about that,” Cassie re- 
plied. “ If you put Maria Riverton by herself 
she is a queen. All these lesser lights, though, 
trying to ape her style and magnificence, are 
simply ridiculous. If I did form a part of the 
retinue of a popular girl, I would take good 
care to secure myself from ridicule. Just 
think of Marne Darlington appearing in Ma- 
ria’s finery with all the indifference of a pos- 
sessor.” 

“ There is just the difference between Ben- 
tie’s and Maria’s friends. Bentie’s are all com- 
mon-sensical and with an individuality of their 
own, while Maria’s are small reflectors of her 
importance and views. If she were not vain, 
she could not have stood such sycophancy so 
long. Now, one of the chief bonds of union 
in Bentie’s circle is the fact that each expresses 
her honest views and doesn’t pretend to any 
thing more than she is.” 

Well, what a sober talk we have had in 
the midst of all this gayety,” said Cassie, with 


Bentie’s Graduation. 123 

a suppressed yawn. “ I wonder, to close the 
subject, what position we shall take as Seniors 
a year hence, and whether the Juniors will 
criticise us at this rate.” 

Of course they will. Here comes Marne 
Darlington, to expatiate on her friend, Maria 
Riverton, I suppose.” 

Bentie, during this conversation, was dis- 
cussing her future with the president of the 
college. He was a man of liberal views re- 
garding the education of women. Not an ex- 
tremist in the sense of pushing and grinding 
weak and strong alike through a college course ; 
yet his influence in personal advice and gen- 
eral talks before the students was to encourage 
thoroughness, rigid classification, and a col- 
lege education, if at all compatible with phys- 
ical strength. As he looked over the parlors, 
gay and beautiful with a hundred healthy 
young faces, crowning well-developed and 
comely bodies, he thanked God in his heart 
that the trial had been made and success 
crowned the effort of an education for women 
commensurate with the lofty possibilities of 
her nature. He felt honored in being a leader 
in such a movement. 

“ And so, Miss Winthrop, you cannot en^ 


124 Three Successful Lives. 

dure the thoughts of going home, after these 
four years of arduous toil, to a life of ease and 
no thought for the morrow.” 

“The toil is what has opened my eyes. 
Why, doctor, I would not relinquish for any 
earthly treasure the mental strength and the 
increased capacity for all kinds of healthful 
enjoyment I have gained through toil. I 
know now that it is only through doing that 
I can make any further advance. I feel so 
thankful to the college, to papa, and to God, 
for all that has fallen to my lot, that I long to 
help other women in some way. Papa sent 
me here with the expectation that when I 
should have finished I was to come home and 
be his housekeeper.” 

“ That is as noble a mission as you could 
have.” 

“ I know it is ; and it shall be my first duty. 
It seems to me, though, that with what I 
know of the management of a household, I 
could at the same time follow out some other 
vocation.” 

“ I had one in mind for you if you had been 
perfectly free.” 

Bentie looked up with a “ what ” in her eyes, 
and the president continued ; 


Bentie’s Graduation. 125 

It is our aim, you are aware, to supply, 
as soon as possible, our teachers from our 
graduates. We wanted you as a teacher in 
the department of sciences. The professor of 
chemistry and philosophy tells me that you 
are very superior in your knowledge and reci- 
tations.” 

Bentie clasped her hands in her old, child- 
ish way and exclaimed : 

“ O Dr. Bennett, what a temptation you 
lay before me ! I will not accept, of course ; 
but, since you encourage me so, I will tell you 
what my greatest present desire is. Do you 
think it would be right for me to spend two 
or three days of every week away from home 
in an assayer’s office? I have a position as 
chemist open to me, and I want to take it.” 

“What does your father say?” 

“ He says ‘ go,’ and that he will do all in 
his power to assist me.” 

“ That settles the question, then, does it 
not ? ” 

“ Not altogether,” and Bentie looked doubt- 
ful. “ I do not know whether I have the 
right.” 

“ My daughter, there is no true parent but 
fhat finds his highest happiness in the prog- 


126 Three Successful Lives. 

ress of his children, and, I think I may add, 
his chief blessings from God in the furtherance 
of their general welfare.” 

I could come home every night.” 

And your father is never at home through 
the day.” 

“ No, and I could give my orders every 
morning before starting, and, by having din- 
ner a half hour later, superintend the table as 
I should on the days I should be at home.” 

Well, Bentie,” and the president laid his 
hand benignly on her waving hair, “ it is my 
conviction that three or four days spent in an 
assayer’s office will save you from unconsciously 
devoting the same amount of time and strength 
to what others who need such employment 
can do for you. The fact is settled that a 
large proportion of the women in the United 
States must work. It is an established phys- 
iological fact that all women should work in 
some way. How advisable, then, for educated 
and cultured women to make whatever they 
do a science, and to increase individual and 
national prosperity by opening as many ave- 
nues as possible to their sex. Be a chemist, 
Bentie.” 

I shall, I sh^ll ! ” she enthusiastically ex- 


Bentie’s Graduation. 127 

claimed. “ I cannot sufficiently thank you, 
Dr. Bennett, for making my duty clear to me, 
nor,” added she, after a pause, ‘‘ for all that 
you have done for my intellectual and spirit- 
ual welfare in a thousand nameless ways.” 

Tears gathered in the genial eyes of the 
stately old man, as he replied : ‘‘ Successful 
scholars, true women, are the richest reward I 
can ask for my labors.” 

When she was alone for the night she took 
her Bible before undressing — her thoughts 
were so filled with the unspeakable goodness 
of God — and sat down, a fair, sweet picture in 
her chaste and youthful dress, to find some 
verse for a closing thought. The book opened 
at that comforting chapter, the fourteenth of 
St. John, and her eyes rested on the words: 

If it were not so, I would have told you.” 

God had opened the way broad and straight 
for just the course she wished to pursue. If it 
were not so, he would have hemmed her in 
by obstacles insurmountable, have given her a 
father with less lofty aims for his only child, 1 
or a success in college less decided. “ If it 
were not so, I would have told you,” made 
Christ so near. It was so pleasant to be led 
by invisible but sure hands into a line of 


128 Three Successful Lives. 

action. It was so beautiful to go to sleep 
under the shadow of a strong fortress — beneath 
the watchful eyes of almighty Love. 

At length the day of days arrived. At 
length the fifty girls, in a costume conspicuous 
for its sobriety and plainness, sat in their ac- 
customed places for the last time, heard the 
farewell prayer from the rostrum, saw one 
after another of their number stand before 
them to utter a thought born to her out of 
her life or circumstances, and felt with heart- 
tears that the moment was at hand when they 
should say, When I was a child, I spake as 
a child, I understood as a child, I thought as 
a child : but when I became a [woman] I put 
away childish things.” And yet, notwith- 
standing, each fair young face was smiling 
through the tears. The light clouds were 
penetrated by a June sun. The winter storms 
had not yet come. It was still all future, and 
what possibilities were there that might not 
lie in their future ? 

It is a moment of supreme interest to those 
who watch a 5^oung woman look with serious 
countenance beyond the bloom and loveliness 
of her youth, to those days when responsibili- 
ties will thicken. There is something of the 


Bentie’s Graduation. 129 

ideal about her as she turns her eyes, serene 
with the ignorance of care, to those days when 
the white hands will hang heavy, the refunded 
cheeks be lined with weariness, and the young, 
fresh, strong, aspiring soul go down into the 
battle of life. 

Who on earth can estimate the strength of 
a soul ? Who can tell how much of heart and 
brain-sinew there is when the exterior seems 
made only for the calm of rest and prosperity. 
To girls is it given to look poetry and to speak 
poetry. How many are there who as women 
can say : We had the courage and the will to 
live poetry?” Those women who have done 
so know the ache that abides in such courage 
and will. 

Some such thoughts as the above surged 
through Mr. Winthrop s mind as he watched 
his only daughter with modest dignity sep- 
arate herself from her companions and ascend 
the stage. Of course he knew almost word 
for word what she was about to say. Bentie 
looked over the great sea of faces with a half 
appealing but composed expression. Her eyes 
met the anxious, earnest gaze of her father, 
the satisfied, approving glance of Ben, whom 
many of “ the girls ” took for her brother — he 


130 Three Successful Lives. 

seemed to show such an established and con- 
fident claim to her attention. Rose, more se- 
date than two years before, was devotion in 
every one of her speaking features. Aunt 
Winifred looked much the same as she always 
did, happy, at perfect rest. Yet there was a 
flush in her usually colorless cheeks which this 
proud day in Bentie’s experience called forth. 

Mr. Winthrop followed with undivided 
interest the familiar words of the essay, or 
rather oration, of his daughter. Her occasion- 
al graceful gestures, the absence of manuscript, 
and the clear, sweet, honest gray eyes, as they 
wandered over the upturned faces, persuaded 
as much as did the speaker’s thoughts on 

Life-problems.” 

Ben’s memory reverted to the wandering 
childish arguments which Bentie had been 
wont to use a half dozen years before, and he 
approved colleges for women with all his heart 
as he observed the effects of rigid intellectual 
training in the arrangement and expression of 
his companion’s ideas. 

One problem of which she treated was the 
difficulty to be experienced in pursuing an ad- 
vanced course of study. She said : 

“ In life we see the unity and yet loneliness 


Bentie’s Graduation. 13 i 

of progress. A mother and child are one by 
reason of tenderest love, but, intellectually, the 
mother for many years must stand compara- 
tively alone if she grow in the same proportion 
that the child does. She must draw her men- 
tal food, not from the child, but from books, 
wise company, and matured experience. Many 
mothers, forgetting this, grow all out into a 
weak kind of love and, before they are aware, 
their children are far ahead ; perhaps forever. 
God is one with us by reason of tenderest love. 
But ‘ his days go on, go on/ No pause with 
him ! Unless we live a mighty struggle, an 
unceasing travail, how can we hope to reach 
any kind of a comprehension of him ? Unless 
there is in our lives a constant progress toward 
the true, the beautiful, the good, the right, 
God, and, in him, all true growth, cease to 
be beautiful to us. It is, however, only in 
active living that we experience the sweet rapt- 
ure of life. What may not our transports of 
delight in eternity be, if, in looking back 
through the long ages of our existence, our 
I am of that glorious hereafter will realize its 
magnificent capacities in contemplating the 
contracted limits of the circle in which our 
I am of time revolves.” - 


132 Three Successful Lives. 

Mr. Winthrop was all at once surprised to 
find the tears dropping over his eyelids. It 
seemed to him as Bentie descended to her 
seat that he must take her away from her 
companions and then and there fold her to his 
heart. She had been an obedient, loving 
daughter ; she was his chief treasure, and he 
wanted to reiterate it to her at the moment 
when she realized one of his brightest hopes 
for her destiny. 

As for Bentie, Commencement Day, with its 
hosts of friends, numerous congratulations, 
flowers, and good-byes, was like a bewildering 
dream. She was really not herself until, hav- 
ing made the journey home, and slept and 
slept, and slept, as school-girls only can, she 
awoke the following morning in her own dear 
room. 


A Star in the East. 


133 


VIL 




A STAR IN THE EAST. 

HEN George was again at home and 
busy, after attending Bentie’s gradua- 
tion, he realized, more keenly than 
ever, the difference of manner in which he and 
his two friends had thus far worked out their 
careers. 

He often went for a few moments to Ben’s 
manufactory. As he watched the latter min- 
gle with his men, and saw critical observation 
and thorough experience visible in all that Ben 
did, he loved him more and more. 

Ben was so manly, so genial, so hopeful. 
Could he always be so? George would query 
with himself on his homeward rides to the 
city. To his honor be it said, he earnestly 
hoped that Ben’s future would be as unclouded 
as his past. He only wished that some favor- 
ing gale of fortune would blow him into a 
monetary equality with Ben and Bentie ; but 
there were few signs of such a prospect yet. 

9 


134 


Three Successful Lives. 


And here they all were now, grown. Bentie’s 
temper had not been fully tried in society 
either, and it might be that she would become 
indifferent to his ambitions, and in short find 
him a bore in the midst of all the flattery and 
attention she would receive. 

George settled himself down in the corner 
of his seat, and looked over the spinning land- 
scape rather despondently after such reveries. 

I have written you his thoughts. I will tell 
you in the course of the chapter how rich 
friends and poor looked on the career of a boy 
who had started from nothing and had never 
once flagged in the steady line of duty he had 
marked out for himself. 

He was no longer teaching in any strict 
sense of the word. Day by day his father 
had grown stronger mentally and morally, until 
he not only assumed more and more of the 
charge of the school, but finally took his son’s 
classes in addition to his own. Mr. Holmes, 
after a time, also connected himself with the 
Sunday-school. 

One Sabbath evening in the May of the 
year in which Bentie graduated, while father 
and son sat listening, in the deep, golden glow 
of the early evening, to the chimings of the 


A Star in the East. 135 

church-bells, the father said, with a humility 
that touched George deeply : 

** My son, I would like to join the Church 
again if you do not think it would be hypoc- 
risy. I have come back to my Saviour, that I 
do know; ” and the deep, rich voice trembled. 
‘‘ I think it would please her.” 

George could hardly bear this. He had 
prayed night and day for his father, that the 
richest gifts of that once strong mind should 
be restored, and spiritual health be added. 
Here was the fullness of answer to his prayer. 
Why had he not prayed with such prevailing 
for his own welfare? The father taken in — 
the son left out ! But it was right, George 
thought. He knew that the unfortunate blow 
his parent had aimed in a moment of delirium 
could be forgiven. He had long ago felt that 
it had worked out for that parent a result that 
might perhaps never have been otherwise at- 
tained. So strange are God’s providences in 
making even evil redound to his glory. 

“ Father,” and George’s voice was full of 
expostulation, ‘‘ I feel sure that God is abun- 
dantly willing and glad to receive you. I 
think, too, that the public avowal of your 
faith, a renewed open consecration of yourself, 


136 Three Successful Lives. 

is the only atonement you can make mother. 
But, father, don’t ask me about these things. 
I have no personal experience to guide me in 
giving advice. I have been almost persuaded, 
and yet for some reason I cannot wholly sacrifice 
to the possibilities of a Christian profession.” 

“ George,” and Mr. Holmes walked up and 
down the room, “ I cannot imagine a fate 
like mine for you. But I can imagine even 
you yielding at some unhappy moment to 
a powerful temptation, and finding yourself 
forever ruined in your own estimation, if you 
have not Christ as a shield and buckler. Do 
yield.” And Mr. Holmes, pausing in his walk, 
laid his hands impressively on his son’s should- 
ers. His waving hair, whiter than snow, 
touched as it was with the pure silver gleam 
of years and heavy sorrow, his deep black eyes 
shining at this moment with all their native 
fire, appealed strongly. 

“ Not yet, not yet, father.” And George, 
pulling himself loose, turned and abruptly left 
the room. He had not expected his father to 
make an appeal to him concerning his own 
welfare, although he himself had spoken so 
freely. He felt pursued : Bentie praying for 
him daily ; Ben urging him whenever they 


A Star in the East. 


137 


met to decide the great question ; the little 
boys and girls of the school propounding 
queries the answers to which might shape 
their immortal destinies ; last of all, his fa- 
ther’s short but urgent entreaty, which seemed 
to him the voice of his mother’s love here 
speaking from the very grave ! Whither 
should he turn ? 

“ I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” 
sounded through the chambers of his soul. 

“ No ! no ! ” his proud will answered back. 

“ But one thing thou lackest — leave all, and 
follow Me.” 

“ I cannot, I cannot.” And George sat 
down at his desk, and glanced with set lips at 
a line of law books which meant to him his 
future fortune and fame. “ I cannot. My 
plans might all be changed.” 

“ You shall be rewarded in the world to 
come with life everlasting.” 

“ ‘Ay, there’s the rub.’ I want life. I 
want to conquer t/its world. I want to be 
rich. I want to be famous.” 

“ For what is man, that thou art mindful of 
him ? . . . As a flower of the field, so he flour- 
isheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it 
is gone.” 


138 Three Successful Lives. 

He put his fingers into his ears in his ex- 
citement. He wished for the moment that he 
had never heard a w'ord from the Bible. He 
had a dreadful conviction that if he lived 
through this hour of agony unmoved he 
should be hardened to ambition. He dared 
not refuse to listen. But his stubborn will 
would not relent. 

There was a knock at his door. There, like 
apparitions, stood his father and Bentie and 
her father. 

“ George, I have brought these friends to 
plead with you,” said Mr. Holmes. Then, 
turning to Mr. Winthrop, he said, It is a 
solemn moment for us both.” 

George,” and the tears streamed down 
Bentie’s cheeks, “ I want my prayers to be 
answered now. We have all been praying for 
you. Do make an offering of yourself.” 

The young man looked at his companions 
as some lion might appear on seeing itself 
brought to bay. Then, as he beheld their 
emotion, his chest heaved, and, breaking into 
a convulsive sob, he hid his face in his hands. 

Like mountain streams that, swelling, rush 
with mighty force into a broad river-bed, in- 
creasing its shallow depths to a swift, strong. 


A Star in the East. 139 

deep, majestic current, so did the deluge of 
tears that followed George’s manifestation of 
emotion deepen, and yet all at once sanctify 
those ambitions of his that had been wide- 
spead, but far from noble in their bearings. 

“ I will try to surrender all to God,” he at 
length exclaimed, recovering his self-control. 

Still the bells resounded. The last call ! 
The worshipers were almost gathered.* 

“ Let us go to church, my son. Perhaps 
God will send some message to your soul.” 

The penitent was desperate now. Con- 
trition, desire, shame, were surging in his soul. 
Anywhere for peace. “Yes, let us go,” he 
said. 

They separated at the door to go to their 
several pews. Bentie thought that the aged 
doctor fixed his eyes on George as they en- 
tered. Well he might. There were traces 
of emotion on the cheeks still slightly flushed 
and in the troubled dark eyes. There was a 
petition in the father’s very manner as he 
bowed his head in silent prayer. 

Dr. Halliday had not been an uninterested 
observer of George’s career. His regular at- 
tendance and unswerving attention had often 
attracted the minister’s notice. It occurred 


140 Three Successful Lives. 

to the doctor that he could in his sermon ap- 
peal to his youthful friend. Gradually the 
carefully prepared sermon assumed the form 
of exhortation. When the words, “Young 
man, give me thy heart,” sounded on his hear- 
ing, George started, then sat down. Then, 
suddenly rising, to the great surprise of the 
congregation, he broke the momentary still- 
ness, as if in answer to the summons, with, “ I 
want the prayers of God’s people to-night.” 

“ Amen,” resounded Mr. Winthrop’s voice. 

Bentie’s face involuntarily broke into a hap- 
py smile. 

With Methodist celerity the evening serv- 
ice was converted into a prayer-meeting, and 
soldiers of the cross clustered around the 
young warrior as he offered his weapons to 
the Lord of hosts. 

As George, with a self-abandonment in strik- 
ing contrast with his manly form and resolute 
face, bowed before the altar, many eyes were 
moist and many a heart was deeply moved. 
While the congregation sang 

“ Alas ! and did my Saviour bleed ? 

And did my Sovereign die ? 

Would he devote that sacred head 
For such a worrn as I ? ” 


A Star in the East. 141 

George prayed amid mingled feelings of pen- 
itence and lingering pride. No help came. 

“ Have you given up all? ” asked Mr. Win- 
throp. 

“ Not all. I cannot quite yield the direct- 
ing of my own destiny.” 

“Then pray that the Lord will take the 
stumbling-block away.” And George did 
pray. One moment his heart yielded, and 
the next all his ambitions swept back in a 
flood. 

“ I will yield. The Lord is omnipotent and 
all-wise. What do I really know about myself 
or what I chiefly need ? Lord, take me and 
do with me what thou wilt,” he at last ejacu- 
lated, and then set his whole mind against re- 
treat and further temptation. Like the creep- 
ing of a cloudless dawn over the darkness of a 
summer night, peace began to spread its gentle 
light upon his soul. While he still knelt, 
hearing, and yet but dimly knowing what was 
said, feeling only a gradual transformation, the 
Sun of Righteousness rose like a king above 
the mountains of his will and unbelief, and 
brightened all the valleys of his soul with 
burning radiance. 

He rose, erect as a young cedar, his fine 


142 


Three Successful Lives. 


countenance glowing with a supernatural hap- 
piness. As the singing ceased his voice rang 
out, electrifying all who heard, with, “ This is 
bliss ! I never knew what life was before. 
This is, in deed and in truth, a new birth ! I feel 
myself on the border-land of a mysterious but 
beautiful country. My soul is standing at the 
very gate of heaven.” Then, losing the ab- 
ruptness of expression naturally arising from 
a sweeping flood of joy, he broke forth into 
an exhortation to the young. In the old 
church, in the sweet resurrection-month of the 
year, there began a revival that did not cease 
until many a gnarled old tree of life was cov- 
ered with a heavenly foliage, and many a 
young plant had blossomed with beautiful 
flowers. 

Should I follow the stereotyped method in 
story-books, I would end right here, as having 
brought the last of my three prominent char- 
acters to what I consider the crisis in his life. 
But I have shown you that Ben could be 
9, Christian, and, at the same time, a suc- 
cessful business man ; that Bentie’s simple 
trust in Jesus was the ballast to her ship of 
life sailing over many and trying seas. And 
I must give you a glimpse of George, working 


A Star in the East. 


143 

under the influence of a new law ; and finally, 
before you leave the trio who are somewhere 
in the wide, wide world, and whom, in your 
wanderings, you may chance to meet, we will 
go together to the laboratory and see Ben and 
Bentie at work with curious mixtures, and 
George learning the rudiments of a science I 
will leave you to divine. 

Those who are familiar with the Methodist 
Episcopal Church are fully aware of the econ- 
omy practiced in all matters relating to spirit- 
ual power. Nothing is wasted. We have 
Bishops and presiding elders, ministers and 
class-leaders, Sunday-school workers and mis- 
sion workers, it is true ; but we also have an 
immense army of local preachers and exhort- 
ers who tacitly agree to fit into all the nooks, 
and thus use up the room and the opportunity 
that might otherwise be unemployed. 

Well, George, after his conversion, showed 
so unmistakably ability and spiritual power in 
the weekly meetings, that Dr. Halliday in- 
trusted more and more of their conduct to, 
his hands at such times when outside aid was 
necessary. Although the congregation was 
devoted to its minister, it was, nevertheless, 
always ready and delighted to hear the elo- 


Three Successful Lives. 


144 

quent and spiritual appeals of the talented 
young convert. He carried those of his age 
right along under the tide of his strong per- 
sonal influence, and those who were far more ad- 
vanced than he in years, and in a varied Chris- 
tian experience, were pleased with the absence 
of all affectation, and the sincere humility he 
showed in his desires to suppress self and pre- 
sent only Christ. The natural result of all 
this was that Dr. Halliday had many earnest 
talks with George about entering the min- 
istry. 

“ I have thought of it,” thoughtfully replied 
the young man one day, “ and I can say that 
it would be no sacrifice now for me to do so. 
I have consecrated all that I am and all that 
I ever may be to God’s service, and the chief 
question with me is, therefore, ‘ How can I 
best serve him?’ Dr. Halliday, as you well 
know, my boyhood was saddened and my 
mother’s life blighted by liquor. From a lit- 
tle boy my desire has been to rise to such a 
position as a statesman as would enable me to 
wield a mighty influence against the sale of 
intoxicating drinks. We as a Church are a 
pioneer Church in our condemnation of liquor 
as a beverage. Our ministers, both in and out 


A Star in the East. 145 

of the pulpit, condemn its sale and use. As a 
Methodist I am on the right side of this ques- 
tion as a matter of course. As a statesman, 
or even an insignificant politician, the mere 
fact that I was an abstainer would make me 
conspicuous.” 

“ And defeat all your prospects.” 

“ It looks like it, I confess. But, Dr. Hal- 
liday, if right does triumph, if a resolute will 
and the cultivation of every power I have with 
reference to my final victory counts for any 
thing, then some day I shall stand in the 
Senate Chamber at Washington, and my soul 
shall ring out in my voice there denunciations 
against the curse that is impoverishing and 
undermining the land I love better than my- 
self. Since all of my private study thus far 
has been bearing on such a career, and my 
ambition has now a guiding and controlling 
power in Christ, I feel more than ever that I 
must make myself felt in politics and ad- 
vanced reform questions. From this time on 
I want to seize every moment that I can to 
grapple with questions of material and State 
policy. I am going to make a speech to-night, 
down near the Battery, on the physical ail- 
ment arising from the use of liquor.” 


146 Three Successful Lives. 

*‘How are you to support yourself through 
all these years in which you are making a 
name in politics?” 

“ Why, sir, with my other work, I have been 
studying law for two years past, and have 
m.et my examinations. In another year 
Judge Rutherford is going to give me regular 
legal work in his office. He understands and 
encourages my desires.” 

Dr. Halliday sat buried in profound thought. 
If George could succeed, the career he had 
chosen would, perhaps, be of vast benefit to 
the country, and at all events would be an 
honor to Methodism and a help to the Lord’s 
side. Looking up at length, the minister 
said : 

My boy, you shall have every aid my per- 
sonal influence can give, and, what is best, 
doubtless, in God’s sight, my earnest prayers. 
But let me remind you that you have chosen 
a path whose every step will be thorny with 
temptation. The Lord lift the light of his 
countenance upon you !” 

Amen ! ” said George fervently. 

After the above conversation, he had fre- 
quent opportunities to speak in this church, 
and that on various reform questions. Invi- 


A Star in the East. 147 

tations to dinner from influential Methodists 
poured in upon him. Occasionally his name 
appeared in the prominent newspapers. In a 
year, primarily through his energy in the long 
and thorough preparation he had given to the 
development of his oratorical talent and to 
research into questions of finance, state, and 
history, and secondarily, through the influence 
of a few like Dr. Halliday, he could not but 
be conscious that he was the center of many 
hopes, and his future the speculation of many 
minds. His social position became, of course, 
firmly established. Indeed, in the Church to 
which he belonged, penniless as he was, he be- 
came in social influence the peer of all. He 
was obliged to practice rigid economy, for the 
school just supported the two men and no 
more. But George had learned to study in- 
dependence, and was never ashamed to refrain 
from any indulgence his means would not al- 
low. As Bentie’s was the only lady’s society 
he seemed to want, he had no temptations to 
lavish expenditures for carriages, concert tick- 
ets, etc. She understood his circumstances 
too well to allow of any needless expense for 
her pleasure, and, besides, she was so often 
the recipient of such favors from other friends 


148 Three Successful Lives. 

that what time George spent with her was 
either at her own house or in some church 
gathering. 

Thus, with the exception of graduating, his 
early plan for every thing seemed approach- 
ing a fulfillment. His despondency, men- 
tioned at the commencement of this chap- 
ter, had no further room for life. He had 
begun his career like a strong man running a 
race. 

Before George’s accession of so much out- 
side influence, Bentie had never thought of 
being other than proud of his acquaintance, 
and there was no manifestation on the part of 
the older members of the Winthrop, Ruther- 
ford, and Stanton families to discourage the 
intimacy existing among the younger mem- 
bers and George. On the other hand, the 
latter, though he was flattered, invited, and 
successful as few young men are, did not 
once swerve in his allegiance to his early 
friends. 

It might have been a question oftentimes 
as to which of the two was Mrs. Stanton’s son, 
as she sat in the library talking over their 
hopes and fears with Ben and George. Ben 
cherished the old confidence in his mother’s 


A Star in the East. 


149 


opinions; he brought all of his speculations to 
her to test their merit. He went to her for 
hope when he descended into those abysses of 
discouragement which all ambitious and en- 
thusiastic young people stumble into. George, 
on the other hand, declaimed more than one 
speech before a very critical audience com- 
posed of one person, and had pleaded many an 
imaginary case, of which Mrs. Stanton and he 
had previously worked up the outline. As 
she sat alone, after these helps she gave the 
boys, she sometimes wondered of which she 
was the prouder. She knew she wished that 
George also was her son. 

As for Ben and George, if that were possi- 
ble, all jealousy with respect to their several 
successes was obviated by the total dissimilar- 
ity of their pursuits. When Ben was in the 
city he never failed to go down to “ the office ” 
to see George, who sometimes laughingly en- 
treated him to get into a difficulty with some- 
body. “ Why, Ben, there is no counting the 
arguments I have manufactured and put away 
for use.” 

I suppose they will fit any case,” said 
Ben. 

Yes ; I have calculated with mathematical 

10 


150 Three Successful Lives. 

precision the total number of possible quar- 
rels that could take place on this mundane 
sphere and settled them all to the satisfaction 
of both parties.” 

‘‘You will surely be the next chief-justice 
of the United States.” 

“ If that is so a case might go hard with 
you if you don’t employ the chief-justice be- 
fore his promotion.” 

“Threats, eh! What a chief-justice you 
would make 1 ” 

Ben sat in a revolving chair, with his knees 
making an acute angle, the result of the po- 
sition of his feet on George’s desk, in front of 
which the latter sat with a pen behind his 
ear, and paper and formidable books before 
him. 

The office was a pleasant one and possessed 
the variety of a sunny window, through which 
the light of a May sun came streaming on the 
afternoon of the above-mentioned conversa- 
tion. 

The smiles flitted over Ben’s face as he sat 
thinking, and George, after waiting for several 
minutes for what seemed coming, said, “ What 
are you thinking of, Ben ? 

“ A case for you,” and Ben smiled again. 


A Star in the East. 15 i 

George seized his pen, then pausing, asked 
for the preliminary fee, which Ben, with due 
gravity, produced and deposited. 

The points of the case,” said George. 

“ It’s a pretty hard case for any body short 
of a lawyer to handle at all. Suppose, Chief 
justice, you put it down without my saying a 
word.” 

“ Even a chief-justice couldn’t do that.” 

“ It must be somewhere in that book of all 
possible quarrels. Look it over and see whether 
you cannot hit upon it.” 

“The legal profession is outwitted,” replied 
George, sitting back and laughing. 

“ Well, here are the outlines. I regularly 
employed an assayer for a year. At the expira- 
tion of a month I asked her to name her own 
salary, but she positively refused compensa- 
tion. You are to prove that any one regularly 
employed and refusing a salary is insane. Got 
that case worked up ? ” 

“ I do not believe it is down,” said George. 
“Are you taking this method to get rid of 
your assayer ? ” 

“ Get rid of her ? She has as much business 
capacity as any one around the works. The 
point is here. Business is business. If Bentie 


152 


Three Successful Lives. 


wishes to do such work, she must hedge her- 
self in by all the conventionalities and neces- 
sities of business. She does not fully under- 
stand this, practical as she is, and I want your 
legal ability to lead her into the light.” 

“ It is a difficult matter to settle one’s own 
differences, let alone meddling with other 
people’s. I will tell you what I will do though, 
Ben. I will work your dilemma up in a mock 
trial, and Bentie shall see herself as others see 
her in this matter. I warrant she will state 
her terms then.” 

“ Shake hands on that, old fellow, and come 
out to lunch with me.” 

George did so. 

Curiously enough, while this conversation 
was going on in the office. Rose, as her friends 
had learned to call her out of consideration of 
her dignity, her future professional career, and 
her height — although the members of her 
own family did once in a while say “ Trot ” — 
Rose sat in the library at home, absorbed in 
a story out of which must have grown a 
thought, for the book dropped slowly from her 
hands. Her mother, who was sewing in the 
bay-window, looked at her daughter from 
time to time, and, skilled as she was in divin- 


A Star in the East. 


153 


ing Rose’s thoughts, prepared herself for a 
conversation which, after a very long rev- 
ery, began quite plaintively on Rose’s part 
with, 

“ Mamma, has it ever occurred to you that 
Ben might some day get married ? ” 

“ Most Bens do,” replied Mrs. Stanton eva- 
sively. 

Rose’s curiosity was at once and ardently 
excited. 

“You haven’t heard any thing, have you, 
mamma? ” 

“ No, I have not heard any thing.” 

“ Do tell what it is, dear mamma.” 

“ Ben has not said a word to me. Rose, on 
marriage.” 

“ But hasn’t he talked round about on the 
subject — hinted something? Now, I know he 
has, or you wouldn’t look so — ” 

“How?” 

“ Why, as if you knew only you wouldn’t 
tell. Now, I think you might. I am his only 
sister, and yet he never tells me any thing — 
any of his secrets. I’ll warrant Bentie Win- 
throp knows all he knows and has given her 
advice. It almost makes me dislike Bentie 
sometimes.” 


154 Three Successful Lives. 

“ I have used my eyes, Rose, and you have 
the same privilege with yours.’' 

“ Well, I have used mine, too. But I don’t 
find any of Ben’s books marked, or any little 
fancy thing about his room that somebody 
might have given him. And his album hasn’t 
a single girl’s picture in it. Tom Harris’s has 
dozens — I was going to say. Ben never talks 
about any girl but Bentie, and she is always 
mixed in some way with a solution. And yet ” 
— Rose’s blue eyes sharpened, as was their 
wont when she was, as Ben said, on a scent — 
“ and yet I somehow feel it in my bones that 
Ben is fond of some girl. Now, mother, tell 
me who it is.” 

Why, Rose,” said Mrs. Stanton laughing, 
“ I do not know that he is fond of any one 
in the sense you mean. Ben is nothing but 
a boy yet.” Mrs. Stanton looked sober for 
a minute as she thought how short the 
time seemed since her son was a baby in her 
lap. 

Rose exclaimed, “ He is twenty-three ! ” 
and the mother found it impossible for a 
moment to realize the truth. 

“ Well, there is time enough,” Mrs. Stanton 
replied. You can’t marry when you are 


A Star in the East. 155 

twenty-three if you pursue your studies and 
become a doctor.” 

I am never going to get married. The 
idea of such a thing ! ” and Rose looked vexed. 

Perhaps Ben wont.” 

“ O nonsense ! All boys either do or want 
to,” was the sententious reply.” 

‘‘Then all boys: must find all girls who 
either do or want to.” 

“ Please stop teasing, mamma, and tell me 
who it is.” 

“ Trottie, you know precisely as much as I 
do about the young ladies your brother visits, 
and must draw your own conclusions.” 

“ Why, mamma,” she cried, almost impatient- 
ly, “ he only pays the most general attention, 
so far as I know. Some have said to me that he 
liked Bentie Winthrop, but I have pshawed at 
that idea. They are too much alike and know 
too much of each other and act too much like 
old people when they are together. It isn’t 
Bentie.” 

“You can’t think of any one else? ” 

“ Nobody but Bentie ! Besides,” said Rose, 
“ I think Bentie ought to marry George 
Holmes. George is exceedingly talented. 
Every body predicts a wonderful future . for 


156 Three Successful Lives. 

him. And how romantic it would be ! Think 
of his history. I wish Bentie would marry 
him.” 

“ Don’t you think she could do better ? ” 

“ Why, mamma, I never heard you make 
such a remark before. If Bentie loves George, 
and he loves her, the idea of her doing bet- 
ter ! ” 

“But in case she didn’t love George, and 
did love somebody else, do you think she 
could do better? ” 

“ Y-e-e-s ” — but vehemently — “ George is 
good enough, even for Bentie.” 

The conversation at this juncture was inter- 
rupted by the opening of the door and the ap- 
pearance of Ben himself. Noticing Rose’s ex- 
cited eyes and his mother’s amusement, he at 
once asked a reason, and Rose said : 

“ I have been trying to find out your secrets. 
Mother knows, but she wont tell.” 

“What secrets?” asked Ben, innocently; 
but making up his mind not to tell Rose any 
thing for not coming first to him. 

“ I think you are in love with somebody, 
and I believe mother knows who it is.” 

Ben shot a quick, surprised look at his 
mother, and thus confirmed his sister’s sur- 


A Star in the East. 157 

mises, who continued : ** In fact, I know you 
are. Now be a good brother, and tell me who 
it is.” 

But Ben was non-committal. Finally, to 
his sister’s importunities as to whether he 
cared a single little bit for any one, he said, as 
he turned to leave the room : 

“I suppose there are a hundred girls in the 
country with whom I might have fallen in 
love, provided — ” 

“ O, you provoking creature!” And Trot 
rushed to bar the door, but not in time to pre- 
vent Ben’s escape, whom she heard a few mo- 
ments after — to tease her she knew — singing 
behind lock and key, “ I knew a bonnie 
lassie.” 

“ There isn’t much use in a brother,” she 
exclaimed, as she stood irresolute in the mid- 
dle of the library. 

“ Ben, I am sure, rides and walks with you 
and takes you to concerts as much as any 
lover could.” 

But he isn’t a lover ! ” At which youthful 
and precocious speech, and especially as she 
was only fourteen and never going to get 
married, she was too discomfited to remain in 
the room or the house. She started for Ben- 


158 Three Successful Lives. 

tie’s to talk it over ; but, on reflection, know- 
ing that Ben might do the same thing, she 
decided to pay a visit to the family physician 
to tell him of some of her observations on 
vapor baths, a cat, as usual, having been the 
victim of her experiments. 


The Laboratory. 


159 


VIII. 


THE LABORATORY. 



HEN Rose reached the doctor’s it was 
to find him absent on a professional 
visit. After wandering around in the 
library for a half hour, looking first at one and 
then at another weighty medical volume, she 
decided that she v/ould go to see Bentie, after 
all. The decision was an immense relief to 
her, for, putting Ben’s want of confidence 
aside, she had never found any one yet who 
was as accommodating to her views as Bentie 
was. So descending the steps with a bound, 
she hastened through the sunny, cheerful 
streets, and was soon at her destination, en- 
deavoring to find Bentie. 

‘‘ Bentie is in the kitchen, making a lemon 
pie,” was the answer to her inquiry for the 
young housekeeper, who was famous for her 
culinary skill. 

“ She is, is she ! ” said Rose, starting head- 
long toward the kitchen, and beginning to 


i6o Three Successful Lives. 

sing in a loud voice as she reached the foot 
of the stairs : 

‘ ‘ Sing a song o’ sixpence 
A pocket full of rye, 

Four and twenty blackbirds 
A baking in the pie. 

When the pie begins to bake 
The birds begin to sing, 

Isn’t this a fine dish 
To set before the king.” 

Bentie had just taken her pie from the oven, 
where its delicate frosting had browned to a 
turn, and with the inviting pastry in her hands, 
went to the door to meet Rose. 

“See, Rose! isn’t it beautiful?” 

“ Good enough to eat, Bentie. ‘ The proof 
of the pudding is in the eating, though.’ ” 

“ It is too hot. Rose.” 

“ O no. Now give me a piece. There will 
be enough left then.” 

Seizing a knife, without further words. Rose 
cut into the pie, and, taking out a triangle, 
tasted it, and said : “ A fine dish to set before 
the king.” 

“ Rose, why did you do so? We are going 
to have company to dinner.” 

“ Why, the only objection that you made 
was that it was too hot. It isn’t too hot for 


The Laboratory. i6i 

me. It is just as good as it can be ; ” and the 
pie rapidly disappeared. 

“ So it is too hot. I was going to tell you 
about the company if you had given me 
time.” 

“ I’ll go out and buy you another.” 

“ Indeed you will, will you ? ” spoke the 
cook, who was ready at any minute to take 
up arms for her mistress. ‘‘You can’t buy 
such pies for no money. You had better 
go home and learn perliteness, if you go 
anywhere.” 

Rose paused in her eating, and leveling one 
of her most dignified glances at the cook, 
turned to Bentie and said : “ Order her from 
the room.” 

“ Hush, Maria. You go to work, and Miss 
Stanton and I will go up stairs. Come, Rose, 
it was foolish in me to mind such a little 
thing.” 

Rose went with Bentie, saying, however, as 
they left the kitchen: “You ought to have 
reproved her more sharply.” 

“ Rosie,” and Bentie twined her arm around 
her friend, “if I had sent Maria from the 
kitchen, I should have punished her more than 
she deserved.” 


1 62 Three Successful Lives. 

“ A servant should never speak so to her 
superior.’' 

“ I may have strange ideas, dear, but gen- 
erally, I think, a mistress or a lady is to blame 
if a servant treats her uncivilly. Maria saw 
you had forgotten your breeding, to take pos- 
session of my pie as you did, and so felt on a 
level with you.” 

“ Dear me, Bentie. If you had never had a 
lemon pie before, you couldn’t make more of 
a fuss. I wont trouble your kitchen very soon 
again.” 

“ Now, Rose,” said Bentie, in great distress, 
“ it isn’t the pie. I only mean, dearie, that we 
shall be better friends all our life-time than we 
could otherwise, if we are careful in little things 
to respect each other’s rights and feelings. 
You are so much younger than I am, doctor, 
that you ought, I am sure, to take a little ad- 
vice.” Bentie gave Rose such a loving kiss 
that the latter was rebuked. 

They had reached the library by this time. 
It looked like a very cool, sweet room, with 
the subdued light falling on the delicate carpet 
and furniture and the rich bindings of the 
books. 

Bentie put Rose into a great Turkish chair, 


The Laboratory. 163 

and sitting down close beside her in its spa- 
cious depths, waited until she became quiet. 
She looked up, at length, heaving a sigh of 
such cavernous suggestiveness, that Bentie 
smiled. 

It is a serious matter,” said Rose medita- 
tively. “ I feel as if I had been born to quar- 
rel with every one — even my brother Ben. I 
vexed him this afternoon, Bentie.” 

“ How, dear ? ” 

O, begging him to tell me something of 
which he has never lisped a word to me. I 
don’t think it is right, Bentie, for brothers to 
have secrets from their sisters, do you ? ” 

It isn’t wrong. Rose. At ali events, secrets 
are seldom revealed by coaxing. Do you tell 
Ben every thing? ” 

“ The worst of it is, I don’t seem to have 
any thing to tell. It is just this, Bentie. It 
seems to me as a matter of course that Ben 
ought to be in love by this time ; but when I 
put questions point-blank to him, he left the 
room and went up stairs. Do you know who 
she is? ” 

Ben hasn’t lisped a word to me, Rose. 
You quite surprise me, too. I had not thought 
of such things entering your brother’s head.’* 


164 Three Successful Lives. 

You little goosie, don’t they enter yours ? ” 
and Rose looked as though Bentie had not 
her usual amount of common sense. 

“ I meant, Rose, that I didn’t suppose Ben 
had any particular thoughts on the subject. 
Of course, everybody thinks of such things.” 

“Well, it is very queer,” and Rose looked 
baffled. “ Haven’t you guessed any one, 
Bentie ? ” 

“ Why, no ! Ben and I have so many other 
subjects to talk over, that that one never en- 
ters my mind in connection with him.” 

“ What I told mother ! ” Rose triumphantly 
exclaimed. “ It is all chemistry or some other 
science with you two.” 

“ O, no, it isn’t,” interrupted Bentie ; “ but, 
so much of the conversation I hear on who is 
in love, and who isn’t, seems so silly to me, 
that I am glad to leave the subject alone. I 
think Ben feels in the same way, Rosie.” 

“ Mother seemed to suspect that it was 
you.” 

“ Why, Rose ! ” and Bentie blushed so vio- 
lently that Rose said : “ I be-lie-ve it is! ” 

“ Rose, you are too bad. If your brother 
thought as much of me or any other girl as 
you seem to think he does, he would have 


The Laboratory. 165 

told me — or her. You surprised me so, Rose 
— that was all,” and Bentie laughed heartily. 
“ What made you blush ? ” 

“ I suppose I always shall if any thing is 
said or done that I am not expecting. Now 
see how easily you might have gotten into a 
quarrel with me — asking questions and seek- 
ing information in such a round-about way.” 
Bentie assumed a very grave expression. 

Rose looked at her rather nonplussed and 
asked : “ Can you tell me, Bentie, how I am 
to live at peace with the whole world ? It is 
a more abstruse subject than anatomy.” 

Shall I tell you ? ” 

** Yes, indeed ! ” 

In very plain language ? ” 

‘‘ In the plainest of plain language.** 

“ Rose, learn to mind your own business 
and let other people mind theirs. You wont 
be in much danger of quarrels then, and, what 
is more, Ben, I am sure, will occasionally con- 
fide a secret to you. You couldn’t keep one 
at present if you tried.” 

“ Nobody trusts me with any, to see whether 
I can.” 

“ We are having such a plain talk. Rose, 
that I will tell you frankly, that the only two 
11 


i66 Three Successful Lives. 

things that keep me from loving you better 
than any girl I know, are your meddling and 
your forgetfulness of other people’s feelings 
and rights.” 

If Bentie had not prepared her remark with 
ranking Rose so high among her friends, the 
latter could not have borne quite such simplic- 
ity of speech. But she reverenced Bentie and 
loved her very much, and it seemed a very 
desirable thing to be Bentie Winthrop’s most 
esteemed girl friend. She put her arms around 
the neck of her companion, and remaining si- 
lent for a moment, said : “ I ought to be 

able to overcome my faults, and I will. But 
you must trust me and help me.” 

“ Indeed I shall,” and Bentie drew Rose 
closer and closer to her while the conversa- 
tion drifted into a discussion of how much is 
meant by the rule of loving one another. 

When Bentie was alone and dressing to 
meet her father’s guests, for whom she had 
taken such pleasure in preparing a dinner, her 
thoughts naturally reverted to what Rose had 
suggested. Her revery, however, was not of a 
personal character, for Ben and she had been 
too matter-of-fact friends. It turned rather 
upon marriage in general. Notwithstanding 


The Laboratory. 167 

all young or old people may say or think or 
do, the subject recurs for thought as often as 
a new engagement or marriage is announced 
among one s friends. There was in Bentie s 
case no pressing necessity for pondering it, 
but, nevertheless, she became very much in- 
terested and finally said aloud to herself: 
“ What does constitute true marriage? ” 

For some reason or another she compared 
her father and Mr. Stanton, Aunt Winifred 
and Mrs. Stanton, all of whom commanded 
her reverence. Each one was so good, but 
then, so very, very different ! 

Perhaps there were grades; perhaps one’s 
goodness was better than that of another; 
perhaps beyond them all and yet comprising 
them all was a superlative goodness which 
would make these one-sided excellencies ap- 
pear like paltry nothings. But then ! what if, 
being married, a man and woman should be- 
lieve this and grow weary of each other? 
What if, after marriage, they should think 
they had in some other human being found a 
higher type of goodness than they beheld in 
each other? Would they, should they, be- 
come unmarried? Like an answer to these 
questions, the solemn words of the marriage 


i68 Three Successful Lives. 

service recurred to her: “What God hath 
joined together, let no man put asunder.” 

In the morning she had read in the Bible 
that there would be neither marriage nor giv- 
ing in marriage in heaven. Why ? It seemed 
to her that all the stillness around suddenly 
whispered : “ Because God is good and all 
goodness will there be manifest in God.” 
Perhaps the glorified souls would be like 
the bright rays of a sun, close beside one 
another, and yet so separate — all tending 
in unerringly straight lines to God. Perhaps 
it was literally true that God was the brother, 
the sister, the father, the mother, the husband 
and wife of all humanity ; that here on earth 
he was merely giving us object-lessons in what 
he is ; in our first beginnings teaching us 
through the earthly father and mother the eter- 
nal prayer, “ Give us this day our daily bread ; ” 
through brothers and sisters a glimpse of the 
unselfish doctrine, “in honor preferring one 
another ; ” through the husband and the wife 
that mutual looking up, that reverence, that 
self-abnegating belief in a goodness given to 
us as especially our own to shield us and lift 
us up and heal all the little wounds that daily 
vexations make, to trust in us and call us good 


The Laboratory. 169 

when others and ourselves think us bad. And 
was the little child set in the household in or- 
der that before “ the silver cord be loosed, or 
the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be 
broken at the fountain,” the father and moth- 
er should learn to feel toward it a love made 
up of all the good affections that had ever 
come to their past lives? Was not parental 
love something like Christ’s love ? Would not 
fathers and mothers, first of all, in entering 
on the heavenly life, best understand God ? 

Somehow, after these thoughts, the world 
seemed like a beautiful temple through whose 
portals she had entered to better learn the 
nature of the God for whose glory it was 
builded. 

The door-bell rang, and her ribbons were 
still to arrange ; but she was soon ready, and, 
going down to the drawing-room, she became 
absorbed presently in the animated conversa- 
tion in which she found her father and his 
friends engaged. 

The dinner was vastly unlike the one that 
resulted from her first culinary attempt. The 
meats were juicy and tender, and the vegeta- 
bles were artistically arranged, and yet sub- 
stantially prepared. The pie, which, owing to 


170 Three Successful Lives. 

Rose’s conduct, had to be brought on in 
pieces, was the subject of special delight and 
remarks. 

Mr. Winthrop did look proud of the com- 
posed little woman who presided so well, and, 
when some one praised his cook, could not 
refrain from saying : 

“ Maria has a very skillful pair of hands, but 
it is my daughter’s head that originates the 
meals and secures their execution.” 

“ What an old-fashioned daughter ! ” said a 
gray-haired gentleman, but with such an in- 
tonation that Bentie felt glad to be “old- 
fashioned.” 

“ Time always brings the d fashions around 
again,” said Mr. Winthrop. “ I believe that 
with the higher mental education of girls will 
come a return of the substantial knowledge of 
our grandmothers. It is these fashionable 
schools with fashionable life and empty brains 
that have ruined the usefulness of so many 
daughters. I wish I had a dozen girls to 
whom to give a college education. As it is, 
however, I expect my one daughter to exert 
twelve times the influence she would if she 
had not been the recipient of so many intel- 
lectual advantages.” 


The Laboratory. 171 

** Can she use so much book-knowledge now 
that she has it ?” asked some one. 

Use it ! She brought it into play in pro- 
viding this dinner. She uses it in a thousand 
nameless ways in making my home pleasanter 
than it could have been without her wise and 
careful management. But the care of our 
home is not all of Bentie’s work. She spends 
two days of every week in an assayer’s office 
learning a profession.” 

‘‘ Why, why ! ” exclaimed one father over 
his glasses ; I wouldn’t trust my daughters 
away from home in that manner. And what 
does Miss Winthrop want of a profession? ” 
The times are panicky,” said another — a 
young man — who had a half dozen daughters 
at home doing nothing. 

My property might go, and then Bentie 
and I can face the world with a smile, for we 
both know how to work with our hands and 
brains.” 

** Do you understand assaying ? ” asked the 
dissenter of Bentie. 

“ O not by any means in all its branches. 
My employer, however, has lately trusted me 
with a great many careful analyses. I am a 
comparative beginner.” 


1/2 Three Successful Lives. 

“ How long have you been studying as- 
saying?” 

“ For a great many years,” said Bentie, with 
so much earnestness that the company laughed 
and told her it was surprising that she had re- 
tained her youthful appearance so long. 

Bentie bore the rallying bravely and mod- 
estly, and started for her business the next 
morning with renewed determination to be- 
come a first-class chemist. 

The air was redolent of the mystical, spicy 
odors of spring as the train swept through 
patches of woods and past meadows green 
and beautiful with the rich, new life cropping 
out in the long furrows and upon the borders 
of creeks and drains. She had ridden just 
long enough to put her cheeks in a glow and 
her blood in healthful circulation, when the 
cars paused at her destination and she de- 
scended. 

. The office looked very much as Ben had 
planned it a few months before. There 
were some flourishing plants in the window ; 
a couple of canaries performed a daily sere- 
nade. With these exceptions and a cleanli- 
ness in contrast with the dingy appearance of 
most offices in the neighborhood of manufac- 


The Laboratory. 


173 

tones, it appeared very much like a place for 
hard work. 

She found upon the table several lumps of 
coal. Putting her hat and cloak aside, and 
donning a long, brown, Holland apron, which 
reached from her neck to her boot-tops, she 
sat down to her day’s work, which she knew 
lay in the coal. 

Ben was a long while in making his appear- 
ance, and while waiting for instructions Bentie 
examined first one lump and then another, de- 
ciding at the same time that there was some 
trouble over the variety used in the manu- 
factory. 

Holding and revolving in her fingers a piece 
of cannel, before she was aware, she was esti- 
mating the possibility of having carved from it 
a watch-case that would outshine the ebony 
one lying on her bureau. She would have it 
daintily carved in ferns of small proportions 
and exquisite varieties. It should be lined with 
green feathers, cut and separated until they 
looked like a fern bed, and it would cost — 

The door opened on her reveries, and in- 
stead of Ben alone, George also entered the 
room. 

Bentie held up her hand, black with her 


1/4 Three Successful Lives. 

handling of the softer coals, in glad surprise. 
George did not hesitate to give one of them a 
hearty grasp and shake. He had been off on 
a lecturing tour and had not seen her in a 
fortnight. 

“ What am I to do with all these specimens, 
Ben?’^ 

“We are not satisfied with the coal used 
under the boilers. It doesn’t generate steam 
fast enough or’ in sufficient quantity, and be- 
sides, we find that the boilers are growing 
very thin where the heat is greatest. We 
want first to find a semi-bituminous coal that 
will burn with sufficient flame to spread the 
heat over a larger space ; and, secondly, such 
a variety as will yield the least possible 
amount of ash and volatile matter. The 
lumps on the table are from various sections 
of the country, and I want an analysis of 
them all.” 

“ I should think the expense would depend 
somewhat upon the distance from which the 
coal is brought,” said George. 

“ Of course. But we hope to satisfy our- 
selves with a Pennsylvania variety.” 

There was a pause of a moment or two, dur- 
ing which George looked thoughtfully at the 


The Laboratory. 175 

coal, and at Bentie, who was again absorbed 
in the fine texture of the cannel. 

You admire that, Bentie,” he said. 

“Yes. I want this specimen for a watch- 
case.” 

“If Ben will give it to me, or one like it, I 
will carve one for you. I used to be quite an 
amateur in such work, and I think I have not 
, lost my skill.” 

“ I will give it to you on condition that you 
make me one just like Bentie’s.” 

George laughed, and saying that that was a 
clause in the law-case of which he had not 
thought of before, promised. * 

Bentie, puzzled over their meaning, glanced 
at the two young men, and then, feeling that 
it was something personal, asked George to 
explain. 

And he answered instead : 

“ Now I should think, Bentie, here would be 
just the trouble with you in adopting assaying 
as a profession. Your mind will, in spite of 
you, run off on watch-cases and all that sort of 
thing. Doesn’t she waste hours of time over 
the beautiful ? ” 

“ If she employs hours of time over the beau- 
tiful, she has the faculty of performing all I 


176 Three Successful Lives. 

ever expected of a novice in the number of 
hours she spends a day in the office. I be- 
lieve her coal and other mineral bric-a-brac 
inspire her to work quicker.” 

“ I do not every day have such a fine speci- 
men of cannel to admire, George. Then, too, 
I do not really study over what strikes my 
fancy. That comes of its own accord. I 
planned, the watch-case while waiting for 
orders.” 

“ This partnership business in a manufac- 
tory seems rather odd to me. I wonder how 
it would work if you and Ben were not the 
friends you are.” 

First rate ! ” exclaimed Ben. “ Bentie tests 
more delicately than a man would ; and, as 
much of our experimenting depends on acute 
guesses, this is just the work for a woman.” 

“ I am rather inclined nowadays to believe 
what Ruskin says of a woman’s education,” 
continued George, a little doggedly, and some- 
what to Bentie’s surprise. 

‘‘What are his notions? He is a little old- 
maidish in a great many points, I think,” said 
Ben. 

“O,” interrupted Bentie, “ he is uncomfort- 
able himself and makes others so occasionally, 


1 77 


The Laboratory. 

merely because he sometimes forgets to look 
at the beautiful as a whole as much as he does 
at it in detail. I like Ruskin.” 

** What does he say?” reiterated Ben. 

“ Something like this : that a woman shall 
be sufficiently educated to be able to sympa- 
thize with her masculine relatives, but not 
compete with them intellectually. iThere is 
. no trouble, then, resulting from a difference of 
opinion. ” 

Bentie glanced at George obliquely under 
her long lashes, and, catching a suppressed 
twinkle in his eyes, which Ben had failed to 
note, and which the gravity of his voice con- 
tradicted, she took up the joke and said : 

“That is a very important point. Just as 
women have, of course, found it a sheer im- 
possibility to refrain from word-battles with 
their fathers and brothers and other masculine 
relatives, when these have soared above their 
feminine eminence, so it is impossible for men 
to take any comfort in their women-associates 
if the latter rise to a plane equal to or beyond 
their own. ” 

“Now confess, Ben, hasn’t it caused you 
some real uneasiness, as you have watched 
Bentie’s progress, lest she should in time 


178 Three Successeul^ Lives. 

have far greater analytical power than you 
possess ? ” . . 

“ Pshaw ! ’ • said Ben emphatically, thinking 
that George did not enjoy seeing Bentie as 
an assayerj and that Bentie was too polite to 
express to George all that she thought. “ I 
never think of her as an assayer, much less as 
a rival assayer. If the work is good, I am not 
concerned to know who performed it. Skilled 
labor is not so. cheap that it can be thrown 
away when found.” 

Ben, does Bentie know why I am here?” 

“Of course not. I did; not know myself 
until you made your appearance. ” 

“ I am going to speak to the millmen this 
evening, on the natural harmony existing be- 
tween capital and labor.” 

“0 1 wish I could stay to hear you !” and 
Bentie clasped her hands regretfully. 

“You can. Your Uncle Rutherford told 
me that, if I did not return with the afternoon 
train, he would understand that Ben had 
made the necessary arrangements for the lect- 
ure, and that he would make up a party of 
our friends to come to hear me.” 

“ What hall do you think I have engaged ? ” 
said Ben to Bentie. 


179 


■ The Laboratory. 

am sure I can’t surmise.” 

‘‘The casting-house. Think of the fine 
ventilation through those open sides ! I think 
we shall construct the platform ov^r the door 
to the blast-furnace so that, if George doesn’t 
say what he should, we can. close his speech 
summarily.” 

“ Not a man would do your bidding, after 
hearing me for ten minutes,” retorted George. 

“Are you going to /declaim against my 
interests?” ; 

“Not a bit of it. Neither am I going to 
take up arms against the laborer.” 

“ I am sure George will be impartial,” said 
Bentie. ' 

“ Can you give me an hour or two this after- 
noon,” George asked, turning toward her, “ to 
listen to my lecture and its anaylsis? ” 

“ If you are willing to trust to the workings 
of a woman’s mind. But I must go at my 
coal now.” 

The two young men presently left the office 
to wander arm in arm around the works, and 
Bentie soon became absorbed in her manipu- 
lations. 

******* 

And here, with a good-bye, we must bid 




i8o Three SucGEssOT:felliyjES/. - 

our youthful friends of thi$^ne^|^.^d-speed 
in their aspirations to prac- 
tical lives. . 

May Charlie grow into a steady, useful citi- 


zen ; Ros^ into a skillful physician and a woman 
who knows how to mind her own business! 
May Bentie prove an inspiration to all wom- 
anly young women who shall read the open- 
ing chapters of her life ! May Ben go on from 
strength to strength, and George glory more 
and more in the discipline and manliness that 
result from self-denial and perseverance ! 


THE END, 




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